Geeks Are Not The Mass Market
If you are working on launching a product/service to get into the web2.0/social media space and you’re looking at digg, tech-crunch, techmeme, technorati, and even myspace and facebook etc. as successful models, you might miss your target market. Those are tools for geeks (and kids), and geeks are not by any stretch of the imagination the mass market. (I still think facebook is hard to use and i’ve only been working on the web since 1996)
Someone pointed out the other day a social networking site for grandparents (launching in the fall) the other day and made a “social networks have jumped the shark” kind of comment. I totally disagreed, you capture the 50+ market on a social network there is gold in them thar hills, at least a lot more disposable income than most people on myspace. Also launched recently Minti.com - a social network for parents to share tips, advice, network etc. now parenting is a hobby that some people spend a shit load on.
(I just heard about minti from a video scoble had put on Kyte.tv, which is sort of like youtube but much more orientated to creation and distribution of video on mobile)
Ok, same thing goes for advertising, I just went to minti and saw an ad for “crutial memory” (that’s RAM for the computer not some kind of baby einstein video), are they kidding, that’s some advertising pissing in the wind right there.
2 Comments, Comment or Ping
Matt
Thanks for the Grandparents.com mention. Like you, we think we’re on to something here. Look for the site to be up and running next week. We’re pretty excited to kick thing off in time for Grandparents day (Sept 9th).
Re: minti and the ad, it’s probably coming from an ad network. I think every site would love to say they have a targeted ad for every page view, but that’s not exactly reasonable.
Sep 1st, 2007
Angela
Thanks for mentioning Minti. Minti has been around for about a year now.
I wouldn’t say parenting is a hobby. I think it’s more of that parents like to connect with each other for support, or to get advice about how to deal with their children, or even their pregnancy. Grandparents are also welcome on Minti, and I know there are a number of them there as well.
As for the advertising, those advertisements aren’t there any more. We are currently using Google AdSense, which you can see if you visit Minti again.
Oct 3rd, 2007
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