It's inevitable, to me, that the social networking space will begin to gravitate toward niche interests, and it's already happening. The latest spree of networks emerging shows some of the things happening in this area.
Russell Simmons, a hip-hop entrepreneur, is backing the creators of GlobalGrind, that empowers users, through a personal page, to link to a number of areas of interest in the genre - including video, music, and news.
Simmons, who built the Def Jam label, said this about the network: "The idea is that we're going to build a way to connect young people. We want to have all the social networks up on GlobalGrind."
Users will also be able to link to their social-network pages as well, being compatible with a number of the networks. The idea is to put all of it into one place, according to GlobalGrind founder Navarrow Wright.
Steve Case, the founder of AOL (TWX) is also entering the social networking arena. He's also doing it in the music area, backing a company called Qloud (pronounced Cloud).
The music application is already the second most popular on Facebook, following iLike. The application allows users to link to or send music clips to friends or link to music videos. You can also link directly to Apple iTunes (AAPL) to buy songs if you choose.
Case said in an interview that "Music discovery has never really been nailed, but the opportunity to bring a social approach to music by leveraging the networks is huge."
Qloud founders are former Time Warner executives from their internet division, Mike Lewis and Toby Murdock.
Last but not least, MC Hammer has founded, along with business partner Geoffrey Arone, DanceJam.com, where they hope to bring the dance lovers of the world together.
The simple idea here is to offer a place for people to gather around their own dance videos, which they can upload and share with others.
Hammer acknowledges that places like MySpace (NWS-A) and YouTube (GOOG) have a lot of dance videos on their networks, but not build around a community.
"There are already plenty of dance videos on YouTube and MySpace, but there isn't one community for these people to express themselves," Hammer said. "DanceJam will provide that."
This will only be the first step in going niche for networks. The ones mentioned above, while generally niche, will eventually break down into much smaller sub-groups in the future. But it does give a little glimpse into what is sure to happen over the next several years: niche social networks emergings all over the Web.
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