Bootstrapping a Niche Social Network

Hi, i don’t think the problem is creating the niche social network, or getting users… for me, and i speak from experience, the problem is actually getting money from the site…

I think this also hits on one of the other comments from the previous post, namely whether there’s “a qualitative difference between “niche” sites and “mainstream” sites”.

In my mind, a niche site should do exactly as you described, providing features that enrich the activities that niche already engages in. A broader “mainstream” networking site simply can’t do that, partly because they can’t possibly have the time to intimately understand each niche, but also because the technological hurdles of supporting all those different needs under one umbrella would be immense.

Instead, mainstream networking sites focus mostly on the social side of things, maintaining friend connections, lots of communication options, maybe even some fun games to play with each other. There’s little value beyond connecting with other people. Of course, that’s obviously a worthwhile goal in and of itself, but niche sites can do much more.

It even goes back to your Ravelry example, where knitters don’t just talk to each other and make friends. They post what projects they’re working on, track their progress, keep inventories of their yarn and needles, share patterns, etc. Those are things that are unique to the niche the site serves, and no broad, sweeping social networking site can ever hope to serve that community that well.

David, I certainly don’t think there’s any one answer that will suit every site, but I would venture a basic recommendation similar to what Joshua has already mentioned in this article. Look at the existing motivations and behaviors of your audience and try to cater to that. In the theater example, for instance, a niche site might keep records of various theaters, shows and actors, giving local productions an easy way to set up a show and gain visibility.

Then, perhaps the site could offer to sell tickets on their behalf, funneling proceeds to a PayPal account or something, taking a small percentage in fees. Or it could offer a classified service, where directors can, for a small fee, post audition notices for upcoming shows, in hopes of reaching a greater variety of actors. On the flipside, perhaps actors would be willing to subscribe to a premium service, where their profile information is available, searchable or even automatically delivered to directors when new shows are coming. Maybe up and coming playwrights would be interested in paying a fee to have their work promoted to directors looking for new ideas. And, of course, local theaters themselves would likely be interested in advertising to such a targeted group of users.

I’m not part of any community theater group, so I don’t know if any of those are valid for that niche, but those are the types of things I’d look into, and I think it illustrates one way of approaching funding for a niche site: cater to the common need, while providing premium benefits.

The one other piece of advice I’d offer is to pick a set of features that the site is mainly focused on, and make yourself a promise that those features will always be available, and they’ll always be free. Then supplement them with additional features that may or may not cost, but make sure the core features of the site, the main goal it was built for, remains free. Nobody likes using a site for a while, then suddenly realizing that it’s a subscription service, or that the feature they’ve been enjoying suddenly has transaction fees.

And, of course, while I’ve done a good deal of thinking about how a niche site should operate, I have yet to actually get mine off the ground, so all of this is untested in the real world. Take it with a grain of salt. And maybe some pepper.

Excellent point Josh! After thinking about it, I’m struggling too much with getting my own theatre group to use the site, where instead I should be concentrating on getting one or two people from EVERY theatre group to use the site. The power of the social network is the “network,” not the “social.”

The biggest challenge that I am facing is promoting my site and attracting users without spending bundles of cash on PPC. I’ve received some traffic from Stumbleupon and findasocialnetwork.com

This is a fantastic article - it’s truly about time that someone addressed the idea that there isn’t a magical recipe like 1. take niche hobby 2. build a website with some groups and chat 3. make tonnes of money from your social network.

We’ve been developing our social garden tracking site (MyFolia.com) for the last 10 months, and in many ways being stereotyped into a “niche social network” has been great for picking up a bit of tech press, but has been a bit of a hinderance to encourage the people that will actually use and appreciate our site - gardeners.

I think one of the reasons why we have been successful at getting lots of great word of mouth across blogs and forums is that our offering isn’t just an empty social network - at its heart there are real tools and features that are designed specifically for gardeners - tools and features that gardeners actually want.

We are trying to use social software (profiling and talk groups) and collaborative tools (wikis and observation journals) to solve some real problems for gardeners (how long does tomato really take to germinate? does it really grow well in my area?) This is what attracts our users as they can see a definite pay off to joining and contributing - they become better gardeners as they learn from others in similar situations to themselves, and likewise their own experiences feed into the system for others to learn from.

I think it’s a good thing that most web users that are joining niche networks aren’t tech savvy as they are less likely to get influenced by the “latest and greatest” - they know what they want and what is a waste of their time. In the end they will vote with their feet, and the sites that provide a true service will shine through.

Hold on - so you’re saying that in order for a social site to be successful, it has to fulfil a need the target audience has?

I don’t wish to be harsh, but if that’s considered insightful, I really must re-calibrate my instruments. If you hadn’t had this revelation before, then no wonder you were finding it hard going!

@Jonathan: Thanks for commenting!

It sounds like you’ve got a lot of experience in this area. Do you have any concrete advice for Eric or for folks in similar situations?

@Josh: I’m afraid I have very little experience, but it would seem self-evident to me that anything, be it a social network or anything else, needs to fulfil a need or it will remain unused. Probably best to ignore technology all together when making any assessment of what an audience wants. Take Facebook: were millions of people wandering around wishing that they had a site that allowed 3rd party apps to be written for them? No, all they wanted was to know what their friends were doing. Once they had that, the rest followed.

This isn’t rocket science - there’s no mystery, it’s just a matter of inspiration.

Eric,

I basically have access to the “two people” from every theatre. My difficulty so far has been that every “two people” want different things. We’re working to try and find matches, where a niche site shares information across needs-based groups. And, of course, the idea is to make it loose enough that those groups can create their own lines of communication for sharing within the network.

The fact remains is that one social networking blueprint does not appeal to others. The vast amount of online meetings between similar interests still happens in relative anonymity on bulletin boards. While I would love my field of theater to find its Myspace, I’m sadly not holding my breath.