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I like Alex Iskold’s article over on Read/Write Web entitled There’s No Money in the Long Tail of the Blogosphere.  I said the same thing once upon a time, a while back, but apparently it wasn’t on any of my blogs, so I can’t find it.  But, yes, the only money to be made from the “long tail” is if you’re aggregating it (or as Alex puts it, “on” the tail, and not “in” the tail).

That being said, I still think there’s opportunities to make money not in the long tail, per se, but as a niche content provider.  I guess if you’re making enough money to live off of (which certainly wouldn’t apply to 90+% of bloggers), you’re not really long tail, but the nature of the web is such that you can aggregate a global audience on a niche topic due to the distribution being next to nothing in cost.

Perhaps we should focus less on long tail economics, which are really just aggregation/network models, and promote the idea of niche content.  Could be another book/slogan/conference series in the making…

In checking out the other sponsors for Thursday’s TECH Cocktail DC, I was introduced to Wine Library TV. I’m not a huge wine drinker (I’m more of a scotch guy), but I find myself very intrigued by the show, which is done extremely well; the host, Gary Vaynerchuck, shows great enthusiasm and really makes a topic I wouldn’t normally be interested in compelling. There’s even a whole episode devoted to kosher wines!

And today I noticed that Cork’d, a niche social network for wine-lovers, was acquired by Wine Library TV. The combination of original content, user-generated content, social networking and, most importantly, high-end products that cater to high-income demographics, seems like a good combination. I’d bet that something like this would work for scotch, cigars, maybe even beer (putting aside the issues with selling this stuff online, which can be tricky). It’s nice to see a business model that doesn’t rely on advertising.

Alex Krupp: Is Social Networking Dead? Nope. Read his post, it’s right on the money.

I’ve often used, as an example of this, a site that was a social network before everyone was talking about social networks. The site is called OnlySimchas.com, it’s the king of the Jewish web world, 2.0 or otherwise. It’s a site that lets people share an announcement of a happy occasion, such as an engagement, wedding, bar mitzvah, new baby, by posting photos and leaving comments. It’s become an obsession and a part of life of the Jewish world, to the point where many people now hear about engagements of close friends and even family via the site.Â

Why does it work? It works, not because it’s focused on a niche, which it is, but because it pays attention to a very specific social interaction common to that niche (namely, the age-old Jewish tradition to shep nachas, or, in other words, to share the joy of a happy occasion), and augments with the capabilities of the medium of the web. Just creating “Facebook for Jews” (which others have tried) hasn’t and won’t yield the same results. If all you’re doing is recreating an existing social network with an added feature, or doing a niche-clone, there’s plenty of open source or commercial projects you can use, and you shouldn’t need to raise venture capital for something like that.

If Wikipedia was around when I was in high school, I never would have had to read any of the horrible books they gave us in English class (I’m hoping I still would have read the good ones).

I used to have to hunt around for spoilers of movies I thought looked interesting but didn’t have time or money to see (say, for example, I like the trailer, but there ain’t no way I’m going to shell 9 bucks for another Tom Cruise flick). Now I go to Wikipedia, and 9 times out of 10, someone has summarized the plot for me.

With the all the squabbling going on about Wikipedia vs. Brittanica, et. al., the important point that seems to be left out is that, while there is a threshold for what is considered knowledge in a print reference, there’s no such limitation online. A spoiler detailing the ending of Scorsese’s Casino may not seem like important information to an editor, but why should he make that decision? Especially when it ends after 2AM, and I fell asleep.

On a related note, there are a few sites which represent a threat to Google’s hegemony; Wikipedia is one of them. Wikipedia’s authority, right now, gives it prime ranking in Google, and as more and more people become familiar with it, they will begin to go there first, instead of Google. I now go straight to Wikipedia for all reference based searches, where I am looking for factual information. Expect the rest of the world to begin to do the same. Ironically, it is Google that gave Wikipedia it’s prominence, exposing them to so many people in the first place.

Susan Mernit links to eatmyhamster and NooZ, to new digg clones (the former focusing on funny stuff, the latter, which is owned by Rojo, appears to be focused on MySpace users).  I was hoping to find that either of these sites were running off the open source digg -clone software Pligg, but it looks like they are both home-grown.

Either way, as I’ve said before, I think these kinds of sites are going to be really successful.  None of them will have traffic numbers as high digg, but that’s because digg is for geeks, and geeks use the Internet more than non-geeks.  But a site that knows it’s niche, does some good promotion and capitalizes on advertising could really be a substantial business opportunity.

Here’s an extended list of digg-like apps.  I know of at least one that’s missing from the list. ;)

As a concrete example of the kind of stuff I was talking about in my last post, check out Care2.com, and specifically, the Care2 News Network. It looks like digg, but it’s focused on topics of interest to the members of Care2 community (the environment, human rights, education, and more). If you think that social apps are just for geeks, think again.Â

In some ways, all these sites (digg, del.icio.us, etc.) are all suffering from the very old school problem of being a destination site. Aren’t they just social apps that are addressing the geek niche? After all, anyone can start up a del.icio.us- or digg-like site in just a few minutes…which would imply the work is in building and maintaining an audience.