I expect you’re right re very few niche networks will attain the critical mass to be viable economically. The reasons you give make sense to me.

I’m not sure I’d agree with you, though, that the future of niches will be as part of larger networks. Some no doubt will be swallowed up and may continue to thrive. Others will remain independent.

It’s not only about the networks themselves from their business points of view: it’s also about the members of those networks. What are they looking for? What makes a social network attractive to people?

I doubt it’s the probability they’ll be marketed at and sold to. It certainly would not attract me.

That’s one of the reasons why I like Melcrum’s and Ragan’s networks. Not sub-sets of big networks and no marketing push other than for their own services, which I’d expect, and that’s pretty low key.

All that could change anytime. But for now, that’s the model I like.

Pedro beat me to responding on Viadeo – which as Pedro correctly points out now has 3m members across Europe and China!

While I think you are right about niche networks, I think very few niche networks will attain the critical mass to be viable economically.

It costs money to develop and run a business network and offer a professional service (continuing development, hosting, customer service, moderation etc). Each of Viadeo, LI and Xing already have staff of over 100 employees in their group companies!

Many of the smaller networks have already given up like SoFlow or are effectively abandoned by their owners (There are a couple in the UK I could mention but will not be so cruel! They have only a couple of thousand registered users at best and a handful of active users).

Small niche networks will find it very difficult to make ends meet on advertising alone and even premium revenue streams maybe too small even if everyone pays something.

I think the future of niche networks will actually be as subsets of larger networks (eg Communities or groups on networks like Viadeo, LI etc) or on white label offerings such as Ning.

This will allow big networks with critical mass and a business model to invest in running and maintaining a viable business but providing the niche community with its own mini-network that it owns and runs.

It will also deal with the problem of having to have five profiles to be on five niche communities – if all those five niche communities (even if private and invisible to the outside World) were on Viadeo you would only need to maintain one profile!

This kind of arrangement is only possible if the big and niche networks agree a win-win deal!

Kind regards

Peter Cunningham
Viadeo

Live and learn!