kidmercury

There is a school of thought which argues that the future of the web lies in niche communities -- communities not too big that are centered around a specific topic. My trading site is an example of this.

Plenty of folks believe in this idea. Marc Andreessen, who I've written a song for (LOL....still bummed out the Internet business community fails to see the humor in that....c'mon people!), believes in this idea and is executing it through a number of his business ventures -- my personal favorite being Ning. And of course Fred is down with the idea of local/niche being where it's at, and is playing this through investments in companies like Meetup and Outside.in.

But Fred and Marc are rich, experienced, and well-connected. The approach they are taking is to create the infrastructure that can mass produce all these niche communities. If you go to Ning or Meetup, you can setup your own niche community in seconds -- for free!

There is a school of thought that such niche communities will only attract casual community clubs, and will not attract serious businesses or commercial ventures. The rationale here is that these services that enable you to quickly and cheaply roll your own community will be too standardized, and that there is too much sharing of a pie of resources.

On the not rich, not experienced, and not well-connected side, though, we have a different approach to creating niche communities on the web. Markus Frind created plentyoffish.com, a free dating site. He's one person earning millions off that site. I'm doing a similar thing with my trading site, though I'm nowhere near the Markus level of profitability. There are plenty of folks in the search engine marketing community who employ this type of strategy as well. If you know what you're doing organic search engine marketing is still a cost-efficient and labor-efficient way of getting traffic.

There are some characteristics of the version of niche communities created by folks like me and Markus (not starting out rich and not well connected):

1. Super small teams. Often just one or two people.
2. All about leveraging APIs and open source software. The mentality of "how can I get someone else to do every given task for me?" is firmly ingrained, and it results in immense cost-efficiencies through the deployment of an open source based software development program as well as consciously seeking APIs.

The key question is is there a way this model can be mass produced? I believe there is, and this blog and my trading site are experiments in creating the template for mass producing the community sites -- namely by focusing on what APIs and open source software can be used to create all niche communities, and by developing certain models as to how various types of communities tend to grow.

But ultimately, the technology is a commodity. The real value is in the social influencers who have the ability to inspire and lead passionate communities, and thus I believe the businesses that are best positioned for the niche-ification of the web will be those that can best ally themselves with social influencers.