Social Networking news and information

We are getting a deluge of sites that are extremely niche oriented.  While sites, like this Obesity Surgery Social Network, will be attractive to a more limited number of people, there are two reasons why niche social networking can be very, very successful.

1.  Passionate Users
Users who are 'sold out' on their topic tend to up their level of participation.  Yes sites like MySpace are bigger because they appeal to a broader range of people, but smaller, niche sites like Dogster may see a greater number of pictures, time spent online and WOM (word of mouth) marketing for the site by users because the users are very much in love with the topic of the site.

Not many sites hope to be miles wide but inches deep.  Vertical (niche) participation is key to developing passionate users.

2.  Monetization
It is much easier to monetize a site with very targeted users.  Looking at the obesity site above, ads for diet pills (lucrative), diet books (amazon), diet programs (affiliate) and even exercise wear/DVDs/equipment stand a great chance at appealing to the subset.  Also, it will be easy for them to get free content in the form of expert opinion from doctors since the doctors will be passively advertising as they opine.

But, what it all boils down to is that it's much easier to sell targeted advertising to a company than it is to take your generic pageviews and expect them to buy.  This is the reason MySpace uses contextual ads so often.  Branded buys will be less and less common as the MySpace demographic continues to broaden.

Niche social networks don't have to be big to be worthy of your attention.