micro niche Archives - TheWayoftheWeb

Ever wondered why networks tend to grow more quickly if they allow groups of self-form?

It’s because, no matter how well you know your subject and your customers, you’ll never predict their most interesting motivations for starting a group. And the ones that you might dismiss can end up being incredibly popular…

Take, for example, the Lolcat Bible… a wiki constructed to translate the Bible into the language of those lolcat pictures you’ve doubtless seen around the internet.

(Spotted thanks to a post on Dana Boyd’s blog)

Now would you have created a group for people interested in creating a Lolcat Bible? Would you have been able to quantify how many people would be interested in contributing, and how many people would then view it? Would you have even guessed Lolcatz would take off?

Me neither.

But by allowing anyone using your website to make their own choices, decisions and ideas, you’ll capitalise when one of their groups does take off. If you’re trying to explain it to the type of people who inists on quantifying everything by Return on Investment, you could try explaining that rather than spending time and money on second-guessing how to force people into categories, you’ll be hiring an unlimited number of people to do your research and development for you, and then reaping the benfits…

Still not convinced? Take a look at Wikipedia’s list of internet phenomena, and see how many you recognise. Then take the list round your peer group, and prepare to be shocked how many people who you’d have thought closely shared you interests will have radically different knowledge (Idea taken from The Long Tail…see reading list, right)…

One of the biggest joys of the internet is the fact you can find people, products and information on pretty much anything you might need, want, or be interested in. So why would you ever want to stop people experiencing that joy?

There’s been a lot of talk about the new Google beta test of ‘Pay per action’ advertising killing off mass media.

The theory relies on the fact that advertisers will choose this option as they can choose to pay publishers each time they actually make a sale, rather than each time their advert is clicked by a user.

Add in the current vogue for ‘micro blogs’ and ‘micro sites’ and it’s easy to see why people think targeting specialised niches would be the way to go. But I think there are a few questions which haven’t been answered:

* If there are 10 Google ads on a page, how do I know which product is any good? If it’s relevant to the specialist communities I belong to, then that’s fine. If not, will i have to join a new community and spend months building up knowledge before I order the TV I want this week? Or shall i go to a mass media site of a brand I know?

* Brand awareness. Following on from that, it could spell the end for small retailers. With no-one to bring their products to a mass audience, who will be trusting enough to spend money with them.

* If sites get more and more specialised, how do I get an overview of something new? If I’m interested in a new hobby, or a new subject, I want to get an overview of everything about it, before I specialise. I don’t want to be forced to visit 20 sites to compile my own overview, particularly if I’m in a hurry.

* The new Google ads. Currently someone can click on an advert, and I get a small cut. But I can move the ads etc to get better click-throughs, change the design etc.
But what happens if the advertiser is running ‘pay-per-sale’ and it’s their website which isn’t delivering sales to the traffic I send?

* How about the risks to advertisers? If a brand spends millions launching a new website, and there’s a bug in their site preventing sales, for example, how long will it be before every site removes their ads and replaces them with a site that delivers?