Niche Networking by the Numbers
Cyberspace is full of community sites to help you plan a trip, get a job, or make a friend. Here's a rundown
By Alex Halperin
You want to kick off an online social life -- but don't want space on MySpace? Fret not. There are scads of alternative social networking sites aimed at plugging you into a community of like-minded Web surfers.
There's also financial motivation for creating online communities if they can replicate the success of sites such as MySpace, whose parent was snapped up for $580 million by News Corp., or teen site Tagged.com and online directory Facebook.com, both of which snared multimillion dollar backing by investors.
Whatever their intent, there are hundreds of niche networking sites. And the number appears to be rising rapidly. Here's just a sampling -- from names that are probably familiar to you, like professional networking site LinkedIn, to networks that are just getting off the ground, such as myYearbook.com, which could erode MySpace's lead among snarky social teens and young adults.