Under Strict Embargo

This week I received yet another invitation to join a new social networking community, this time a site targeting Asians working in the online and IT space. The site looked great but I declined the invitation because I knew I simply wouldn’t have enough time to invest in making it work for me. With the number of new vertical social networks increasing almost on a daily basis, the obvious question is how many can you regularly engage with?

Most vertical sites fall into three broad categories – Life-stage, Professional and Fans. Recent high-profile launches have filled some of the key life-stages gaps. Mothercare’s Gurgle is cleverly targeting new parents with SAGA Zone taking aim at the silver surfers. A crowded number of sites including Imbee, hi5 and Piczo are attempting to stratify and grab a section of the kids and teenagers segment.

The launch last week of KylieKonnect a social networking site for devotees of the pop princess (no I am not a member!) heralded the arrival of the Fans category. Parlophone/EMI has stated that the site is likely to be the first of many such communities built around their key artists. Hobbies and interests whether music, skateboarding or supporting Spurs lend themselves beautifully to vertical communities. Prepare for a plethora of launches in the coming months.

The professional category obviously has the most scope for growth with hundreds of professions and industries that could benefit from dedicated social networks. I recently joined Marcom Professional the closest thing yet to vertical network for the PR community. The site has huge potential to become an essential tool and has some nice features. However, using the site is a reminder that a large part of the power of Facebook lies in its intuitive interface and navigation. Nevertheless I would recommend signing up and giving it a try.

My feeling is that it is probably difficult to actively and regularly interact with more than four social networking communities at a time – but that just might be me. I think most people will have a home network which might be a ‘general’ site like Facebook with varying combinations of vertical sites from the categories above. The picture is obviously complicated by the Twitters and Habbo Hotels of this world. What is clear though is that first-mover advantage will be critical in the vertical social networking space. Despite her enduring popularity I doubt there is space for more than one network devoted to Kylie!