Niche is nice.

Today Mashable featured an article Konnects Launches Network of Communities for Business Professionals, oh ya I've heard of this site it's called LinkedIn. ;-)

The article is great at exploring the features and issues facing the good folks at Konnects with their newest entry into business social networking communities. What they didn't question was why???

The world is filling up with neat ideas and cool me too approaches. I'm wondering why programmers and marketers alike don't start focusing their attention specifically on niche solutions now?

After all how many social communities can one person realistically monitor? Human nature tells us we can focus on one topic or idea at a time effectively. So why do feel the need to maintain and monitor a Flickr, MySpace, YouTube, LinkedIn and whatever.com accounts? Are they necessary? Are they all relevant or simply bookmarks that tell the world, I’m here too, I belong, I’m in.

In my day-to-day reality I see LinkedIn as my most viable social community tool for now. Along with my various blogs.

So again I wonder... How many new me too social networks will we see in the coming years? I'd like to be the poster child for the promotion of niche social community development exclusively. It’s what we focus on everyday at Omnifuse (where I work today – a social community platform development company in Newport Beach, CA). And it’s how I build my business socialFIEND (a online PR and Marketing firm).

Yes social communities create a locked in feature rich content focused environment where members decide the destiny of the network. So let's focus our minds and brains on applying this wonderful technology to verticals or niches that could utilize them to their fullest potential.

Why don't I see an online poker community out there yet? Or a Coca Cola collectors community, A Disney pin collector community, A hockey, baseball or sports memorabilia community? There is an infinite number of ideas that spin readily off your head if you think about it. I want a Green Bay Packer’s fan social community.

The next biggest question to everyone is can you monetize this concept or is it simply neat? Well YouTube was quite simply neat and they seemed to do alright with their acquisition (Google To Acquire YouTube for $1.65 Billion in Stock). Not bad for a knock off America’s Funniest Home Videos play with an amateurs edge.

Maybe it’s just me but I’d like to see focus to all of this dot-com-all-over-again buzz. Let’s leverage this technology and find new paths to prosperity, integration and relevance for the social community development market.

Best Regards,

Kenneth Knapp
Founder, CEO
socialFIEND