Specialized Social Media Options

[bwelford]

Some social media such as deli.cio.us, Netscape and MyYahoo appeal to a wide variety of interests.

With the launch of Sphinn, we see a slightly new phenomenon where a social 'medium' is designed to appeal to a particular slice of the population. I realize that digg is somewhat similar in appealing to the techy crowd. However I was wondering where I might find a list that characterizes other social media by the crowd who tends to get involved.

Specifically for the following types of interest, which social media would be most suitable:

Food and Drink
Household
Outdoor Sports
Animals
Gardening
Green.

Are there other media that go after particular interests?

[A.N.Onym]

Specialized social sites have been around for a while. Sphinn was kinda late on that. But there are some industries without them, still.

Here's a list of 25 social sites:
http://tropicalseo.com/2007/top-17-niche-s...y-send-traffic/

A traditional link from W-a:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_socia...orking_websites

Here's 1200 categorized Web 2.0 sites:
http://web2.econsultant.com/top-web2-sites...rized-list.html

Though I doubt all of them are digg-style, plenty of those are niche-targeted.

This post has been edited by A.N.Onym: Jul 19 2007, 10:35 AM

[bwelford]

Those are excellent lists, Yuri. It certainly gives a good resource to try to find the best social media for a particular topic.

Nevertheless it seems to me there is a problem if you're trying to find a relevant sub-group that are 'the best' for a particular topic like Food and Drink. I suppose the technical term is we need a taxonomy to help us. We need some way in which we can identify which social media are most associated with each topic.

Unfortunately most efforts seem to be concerned with the totality. For example, Steve Rubel, in Crowdsourcing, a New System for Measuring Influence (Beta), says that Edelman are coming up with a new way of measuring authority given that Links are now discredited. That's an intriguing approach but for my problem, it needs to be applied only to say the movers and shakers in Food and Drink.

I don't see the answer coming algorithmicly from say tags or clusters. It probably needs concerted human effort, but I don't believe that's going to happen.

Anyone got any bright ideas?

[iamlost]

Social media 'interest' specialisation is somewhere in the future. To date I see social media only targeting broad demographics.

Is that Opportunity I hear knocking on Barry's door?
The Social Media Taxonomy eBook by Barry Welford
Valuable affiliate opportunities available.

The SM conversion challenge is:
* determine the broad demographics of each SM site - a moving target, i.e. FaceBook going beyond the uni crowd.
* best match 'interest' and demographic group(s).
* determine communication vectors within each 'matched' SM site.
* open communication and point to your niche site(s).

If there happen to be 'food and drink' groups already differentiated join and participate. If not, if possible, create such groups.

If history holds some of these groups will likely spin out as stand-alone SM sites based primarily on interest. An occassional 'me too' copycat SM site will appear to cash in as the drift from general to specific continues. Entropy takes time and SM is still young.

So we each do our own exploring and evaluating and we each keep our findings largely private. Unless we are selling 'here be treasure' maps.

[SEOigloo]

Hi Barry,
The exact thing you are asking for is what I have been wondering about ever since I heard the first person say that SM would become niche-oriented. It is going to be so much better for my clients when there is an SM site for every category you listed. I'm trying so hard to 'get it' about Sphinn so that I can see this type of interaction on a niche level, in hopes that there will be opportunity to put this all to use when very powerful SM sites in other niches evolve.

I especially think the green stuff is going to be important and big. Yay!

But, I have yet to find a true taxonomy yet. I'm waiting with you on this one.
Miriam

[bwelford]

Miriam, you've probably seen that Andy Beard has written Sphinn - SEM Attention Wars that points to the lack of a taxonomy. He is upset that Sphinn has not acknowledged the others such as PlugIM and Bumpzee as it started up. Indeed he clearly felt there was no need for Sphinn and that folk should rally round the existing ones. People will off course behave like people and do their own things.

It all points to the potential difficulty of social media. There's a limited amount of original content. So to be visible individuals talk about not only the original content but also what others are saying about the original content. A taxonomy would only provide a checklist of all this fluff that is being created, particularly in some fields such as SEM. So my heart wouldn't be in writing a taxonomy of all this. Perhaps those of us who try to mostly write original content cannot rely too much on social media. It has a place but we've just got to get our own audiences directly. At least with RSS Newsfeeds that's a doable endeavour.

[DCrx]

I had some hope that Go2Web20, billing itself as the complete web 2.0 directory, would have used that fancy interface for something useful. No such luck.

I would have expected something more like a treemap layout of relevant tags. The tags would then relate to the associated sites.

Where's the usability? That would be social.

[bwelford]

That's fascinating, DCrx. I guess the problem is that Social tends to equate with Messy. Even if you tried to organize everything, individuals will start moving around and the organization just doesn't stick.

[DCrx]

That's fine. But it's a little more what you would expect from Web 1.0. Problem is the PR machine is writing press releases the UI can't cash.

Sites like liveplasma categorize far more nebulous data, and do so with far more human insight (social) than reflecty logo gloss.

You'll have to enter a working California Zip, but check out planjam. I've been watching it for a while, and it is getting better. Work through planning a date, see how that works. That's a site that takes topics like "entertainment" or "food and drink" and gives those rather broad terms a usable context.



This post has been edited by DCrx: Jul 22 2007, 09:38 AM

[A.N.Onym]

The problem with the 1200 social sites I linked to above is that very few of them drive noticeable traffic to be worth the effort. Social sites are young, and many of them offer little usefulness and are very unusable.

Not being content with other sites and wanting to do better is the reason to start the same stuff of your own in the same niche and is the reason, in my opinion, why Danny started Sphinn.