If you consider making a list of 5 most influential things that changed the way we interact with people in the recent time, definitely social networking would top that list. Niche social network is just another big instance of how social networking tends to go deeper. If you have not dwelt in a jungle cave far away from the civilized forces of life you have definitely heard of Facebook or twitter or Google Plus or most probably maintained an account with any of them and many a time found them to be immensely helpful in either finding lost relationships or friends or increasing social contacts or for sharing your opinion or for influencing people with your valuable opinion or for just having fun time in chatting, looking at the new posts, etc. You know social networking is almost the irreplaceable fourth dimension of our modern life and unless you are stubbornly pessimistic about the possibility of this new virtual social space you will end up admitting that this actually saved countless people from social alienation. But even social networking is increasingly becoming focus or specialty oriented to cater variety of tastes with dedicated networking space and this is what we commonly refer as niche social network.
Niche social network: Definition
The word niche is used to refer to a specialty area. So a niche social network is typically the social networking spaces that are focused on some special interest and consequently social networking and sharing among people having that same interest. For instance a social networking site predominantly for members with spiritual interests can be a niche social network for likeminded people. Similarly a social networking site and chat room for learning different languages interactively through real time chat or language exchange is a niche social network for people interested in learning different languages. Social networking sites where mainly travelers share their experience, guides others or seeks guidance or provides description and photography is a niche social network for travelers. Niche social network can be of variety of interest groups or people with different interests.
Difference between niche Social Network and others major ones
It is true that if you compare Facebook or Twitter with small interest or specialty specific social networking sites, the difference of size, subscriber base and other business aspects is hilarious enough to make these niche sites look like Lilliput. But especially in social networking typical size, encompass and other parameters corresponding to volume are increasingly becoming insignificant. After almost a decade of social networking experience people are matured enough to have specific choice of interest area while communicating with people. This new trend focused approach while using social networking gave birth to niche social network. Our postmodern age personality is split into different interests and we prefer to give a vent to different sides of our personality at different times of interaction. So when after reading a fascinating novel we want to share one or two insights a reader's social network can be the best place to do it, while for sharing our next travel plan or being guided on couple of things in relation to this we would better off with a travel forum or travel chat room. Thus niche social networks offers specific interests in contrasts to the so called big all-in-the-same-bucket sites.