Niches: Ning and new myspace

After the dramatic decline of Myspace, the higher ups reacted by 'verticalizing' Myspace, essentially, conceding to Facebook the title of #1 Social Network and instead opting for "powerful music (and other things too) portal." (going back to its roots as it was originally a music site) People in the social networking world seem to feel that the market has gotten saturated, and thusly new companies need to be extremely innovative and find unoccupied niches; also, by verticalizing, a site can cater to a specific demographic and a specific field, and thus be much better able to support itself by advertising, as rates are higher in such circumstances.

One example of this phenomenon is Ning, which is dedicated to allowing people to create their own social network sites: they pitch both to the casual user and the business customer. (You can see more Ning networks by flipping through Ning's blog) You can easily sign up and begin your own network (and I did, just for testing purposes. Join and try it out too? There are a lot of features I can't really try out just on my own.), and start customizing it. (For more about Ning's capabilities, read their help section)

I'm pretty darn impressed by both a) Ning's ease of use, and b) the amount of features Ning has, although currently Ning would not be useful to me, as what in the world would I create a social network about? (hah, any suggestions?) However, if I did ever want to create an online group about something, I think I WOULD want to use Ning, because it allows for members to form sub-groups which can be private, for both individual blogs and a discussion forum, and has a heck a lot of apps which add functionality. (Like polls, stores (Ning doesn't ban running a store on your site), Twitter tracking, various media streaming apps, collaborative apps, etc)

( how Ning makes money )