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Ethnic social networks

Today, I've paid my respects to the Jewish Holocaust victims at the memorial in Berlin. Sure this probably has little relevance to what I will comment about today, but it is interesting to note. Koolanoo is a Jewish social network that recently got about $3 million in capital from a venture capital group. The company that owns Koolanoo also plans to launch other social networking sites geared towards other religious and ethnic groups. It currently owns 360Quan.com, a Chinese social network and video site.

It's funny how so many social networking websites based around the most far-out of themes and ideas are popping up these days. These niche social networking sites hope to differentiate themselves from the thousands or more other sites and gain the precious capital and lucrative marketing revenue enjoyed by behemoths such as MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube. The popularity of Web 2.0 seems to mirror blockbuster movies right now as investors and companies are trying to find the next "it" site and make lots of money. As the critical mass of members are needed to make a social networking website useful to the member, many social networking websites are gearing themselves towards niches in order to get that 2% of the population on their sites 24/7. Facebook started out as a social networking site among college students in elite universities. Now, it's a public site open to all members based on region.

Koolanoo looks to have some promise as Jewish people tend to stick together on a lot of things. The same goes for any ethnic or religious group such as Koreans, Chinese, African-Americans, Hispanics, Quakers, and Catholics. People tend to flock towards what's familiar, and I won't be surprised if this company rolls out with sites for every single major ethnicity. The only concern I have is that others already exist. For example, Google's Orkut is a hub for Indians and Brazilians. MySpace is the hub for Americans. Cyworld is the hub for Koreans. It would be very hard to battle with such incumbents who've been around the space for at least several years.

posted by Koh @ 8:27 AM