1. I expect this site to have a strong following even if it doesn't come near the generic any person networking sites. They'll have really focused, enthused users.

In fact I 100% expect there to be a niche SNA for every community there is. The only thing stopping it is not the user interest but the shortage of people who realize they should be made and can make them;>

Posted at 8:04PM on Dec 18th 2005 by Ted Rheingold

2. but if you are a person of many interests Ted would you then belong to many niche SNAs? and how would you manage all of those sites and relationships? do you have a vision of what your interactions would look like if you belonged to say ten of these special interest sites?

Posted at 8:04PM on Dec 18th 2005 by judith

3. i am the webmaster and a business partner of icelounge and have read this article and the posts before me. i appreciate the feedback and wanted to give you some of my insight.

of course i agree with Ted because he is believes that niche SNA's will be powerful if someone wants to build them. we selected the skate community because we are involved in it and realized that its growth on the internet has not gotten near it's potential (in our eyes).

i understand and agree with Judith's concern about managing multiple SNA's independently. yes, it may be pain in the neck, however i we believe this is the next cycle of SNA's. i will make some comparisons which hopefully demonstrate this point, however it is subjective and i only base this on philosophy and issues somewhat 'non-related'. we are hoping the fundamentals will work the same. first example will be eCommerce.

there are few sites that sell 'everything' we all want. amazon is one of few that has been successful. even though we can find great deals there, other sites give us the type of information consumers desire which is specific to their industries. we as consumers have to manage our accounts independently and it would be nice to have it all in one place, but we have driven the internet to this point.

later, microsoft attempted their 'passport' program. one of the goal was to have consumers store their ecommerce information in one place and have sites allow passport users to buy from them. this hasn't been successful for many reasons (one may just be the company behind it!), but this lack of success is a result of consumers not buying into it (no pun intended).

next example i want to use is plain old news articles. in my opinion, search engine companies have the best capabilities to gather and aggregate news. i use MSN and customize my news page, however i have always been a fan of matt drudge. i know that drudgereport.com is far weaker with news than so many other news sites, however my loyalty to him keeps me coming back.

my final example is the nature of industry and economics. consolodate, expand, consolodate, expand. look at telecom. divestiture causes a zillion companies to come about. now they are consolodating again. we believe that SNA's (by nature of being a newer concept) are in a consolodated phase. the next step is to expand into niche communities.

we are anticipating niche communities to come on strong in the next few years and have put together icelounge.com to see if we have timed it right. if it continues growing as it has, we believe our philosophies and fundaments are accurate and plan on doin similiar things to a number of vertical markets.

if you read this judith (or others), please don't take this as a way for me to say you are wrong, because her point is 100% valid. although valid, we are attempting to apply fundamentals and philosophies not a proven concept. we at icelounge hope and feel that a special interest site with loyal users having functionality catered to them will prevail over inconveniece.. but only time will tell!

any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Posted at 8:04PM on Dec 18th 2005 by icemaster