Hitwise's LeeAnn Prescott has an interesting post today about emerging social networking trends - particularly the growth of online niche communities, like the mom site, CafeMom:
It's no surprise that online communities are growing in "need niches" - serving as effective support groups and deep databases of experience for audiences with unique daily challenges. It's interesting, though, the technology selected. Although WIKI would likely be a much more appropriate medium (in terms of searchability, peer review and elevation of the best content), the online community's advantages are simply more "human friendly," appealing to lots of key emotions for a behavior transition as significant as offline friend & family network to online community support:
- Ego: I have a space that is mine. It reflects me. I can share it with people. I can see how many are attracted to the space.
- Human contact: This feels one-on-one, like relationships I'd have offline. I can see who is talking about what. I can put a face to the content.
- GUI: I understand how this works, it feels easy to use and like something I can do. I know it's technology, but I don't feel confused or ill-equipped to get involved.
- And, many others...
Two other great resources in the social networking and mom marketing worlds respectively:
Hitwise's Top 20 Social Networking Sites:
A quick reference chart and some interesting commentary on the sites that are looking to reduce MySpace's 80% market share.
Email Labs study on Effective Strategy for Email Marketing to Moms
It's a little older of a document, but has some compelling statistics and trends - all for the price of a quick registration
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