web/tech: May 2007 Archives

As any regular visitor to this blog knows I am in the process right now of choosing a business idea that I think not only fits me and my interests, but also is good enough to provide a perfect replacement for a regular job and the income it provides.

So far I've taken a look at building a social networking site and a social bookmarking/ ranking site. They're both fairly good ideas that are fairly popular right now. Either of them would probably fit into my interests well and provide a decent return on the investment of my own time and money provided they are successful and competitive with other offerings.

However, I still have a few other ideas I'd like to look at before I make a final decision. As for now, and the reason for this post, I want to take an opportunity to look at an entirely different view of this decision. I'd like to address the whole question of "Should I do it?" as opposed to "What should I do?"

The main motivation for this is a few articles that have popped up on my radar over the last week or so suggesting that I'm way past the prime age that could be indicative of whether or not I'll be successful at this little venture into the uncharted waters of entrepreneurship.

The next category of business idea I want to throw around is that of social ranking and bookmarking. I think it follows well with my previous post because it is also an extension of the social networking category.

In the past I have been a little critical of sites like Digg. Better put, I have been critical of the presumption that there exists a mob that can behave as a filter in a civilized, democratic manner that reflects good taste so much so that I would count on it to recommend good news stories. My beliefs haven't changed. I still don't think there is a system or body of people that can do that and satisfy the masses. However, the problem is very interesting to me and one that I wouldn't mind tinkering with.

The idea that people will visit a particular website, contribute content freely, and then go so far as to categorize it and rank it is pretty good when you think about it. This takes a lot of the stress of the owner to produce content. The primary caveat being that a large community forms and quality content and ranking becomes the norm. As far as business ideas go, this isn't too bad. But, we need to dig in a little deeper and explore.

Yesterday I announced the beginning of a series that I am employing to define a project I will begin working on very shortly.

I'm going to look at a variety of ideas in an attempt to weed out those that either don't suit my preferences or those that just don't make sense. The first category I'm going to look at a bit is social networks.

Social networks are extraordinarily popular right now for a variety of reasons. However, it's kind of important to differentiate between broad social networks and niche social networks. While this definition may be similar to others', this is solely my definition or distinction between the two: A broad social network is a web service or web site in which the sole purpose is networking in and amongst social circles. The network allows for the collection of friends and facilitates communication through individual "identity" pages or messaging. Messaging may also consist of blog-like or forum-like posting. I would put sites like myspace and facebook in this category.

A niche social network is a web service or web site which utilizes the components of social networking around a central interest. I can think of several examples of this model. For example Flickr (photography), YouTube (video) and MyBlogLog (blogging). So which would be the best option if I were to build one?