More social-networking niches

Just this week, two more stories on new, more vertical-interest SN sites: AOL’s new action-sports site, Lat34.com, “billed as a kind of MySpace for 12-to-34-year-old male BMX-riders and snowboards,” Reuters reports (the San Diego Union Tribune and many other news outlets covered it too). Then there’s the new safety-conscious niche, but one site eSchoolNews mentions is Whyville, which is more online game world (or edutainment) than social network (see my “Alternate-reality school?”). Another service in this niche, though more purely about entertainment, is Disney’s Virtual Magic Kingdom, which Tim O’Reilly blogs about here. I guess it’s possible, though, that social networking could be more like a game to 8-to-12-year-olds. Maybe that’s entirely appropriate. But another example eSchoolNews points to is the kid-blogging/social-networking startup Imbee.com (see my coverage). Oh, and another niche site I just read about in the sidebar to an Observer article on social networking, though it looks like it’s been around for a while and is only now being called a SN site (we’ll be seeing a lot of this label-morphing): Gaydar.co.uk, “the No. 1 gay bar in cyberspace, with 1 million UK subscribers and 3.5 million worldwide.” There’s more on the “nichifying” at ClickZstats.com.