I guess my point wasn’t clear. My point is “MASS” social networks will be failures - but “MICRO” social networks - ones with very specific goals or target audiences will continue to proliferate. Your example of a shared Motorcycle interest is perfect - I could totally see a very targeted social network that would be successful.

In this case, my example was FastCompany building a mass social network for their readers. It’s simply too broad a subject with no opportunity to concentrate by group, topic, problem, or even geography.

These Mass mediums just think ‘Social Network’ is the next buzz and they all need to launch one. They’re doomed to failure!

Here in Indianapolis, there’s IndyMoms and IndyPaws… two social networks that concentrate both geographically and by topic… and both are doing fantastic.

Doug

The key challenge is the way people relate and in spite of the fact that humans are by nature gregarious, they still need something in common and that may be geographic or it may be religious, ethnic, subject matter, educational or otherwise. The large networks like MySpace and Facebook are not conducive to this commonality and therefore they are doomed to a secondary position and new networks need to spring up to solve the basic challenge.

The secondary challenge is that the information out there is too much in quantity and too little in quality because there are no subject matter ‘editors’ or ‘experts’ who filer the content. This will only happen when the networks get smaller and more focused and thus the information is more focused and hopefully more filtered since supposedly only persons with relevant knowledge are contributing.

Thanks for the post.

Mass media mentalities just wont cut it on the internet, its too easy to turn off and tune out. I even question the ability of niche social sites since facebook’s open API and large user base make it a ripe ground for developers to take advantage of it.