Clickz has a good article on how broadband users have been characterized as "one homogenous group of people," or as we also talk about here - a mass audience - and talks about a study that shows the opposite is true. The sooner we understand there isn't such a thing anymore, the better we'll be in our marketing efforts.
When I say mass audience, I'm talking about people that build communities around the same interests. For the average Internet marketer, this is the audience we want to find or create and then market to.
I think the thing that tempts marketers to keep thinking about getting huge audiences is because, for the most part, that's what the majority of people online write about. You hear about Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO), Microsoft (MSFT), MySpace (NWS), YouTube and Facebook; among a number of others.
It seems to make you think that there all these mass groupings that can be formed. In reality, there aren't that many, and the verdict is 
still out on whether these audiences will be kept together. Once the endless amount of niche community sites start to form, it will remain to be seen whether the larger online community sites will be able to retain the vast majority of their users.
Even now there are millions that sign up that rarely even use the sites that often. Which means that the generality of it doesn't appeal to them that much.
We need to be careful that we aren't overly influenced by the large companies we read about. They still think in terms of mass-media, and will continue to struggle on how they can hold a general audience together. A niche marketer shouldn't have that problem when they target the right people.
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