Rich niche communities

It would appear that niche communities are all the rage -- at least for the moment they are.

You know what they are...you've seen them. Total virtual communities dedicated to just one topic -- like Snooth.com for wine connoisseurs and silvervixens.com for women "of a certain age." (Disclaimer: my company programmed silvervixen.com.)

I've read several articles over the past week or so touting niche communities as the best online marketing vehicle for businesses. As they say, the money follows the crowd.

So, what's driving the trend?

1. Approximiately $920 million dollars was spent in 2007 in ads on social networks -- and 8 percent of that moolah went to niche sites. Um, yep, that's enough to start and drive a trend.

2. The big companies are in it -- so it must be good . Taco Bell, AT&T, Budweiser (although it failed miserably) have all thrown their corporate chapeau in the ring. It's been my experience that no matter if a corporate strategy is well -- executed or not, if enough companies do it, other companies will do it, too. Call it follow-the-leader or the blind-leading-the-blind ... whichever works.

But, here's what I think is really the driver:

3. Companies benefit from being involved with a very small aspect of social media -- and yet they're still just buying ads. They don't have to change their modus operandi one iota -- and they can tout that they're "engaged with social media." Same sh*t, different tactic.

It's funny how the world works when you have the money to spend.