I had a hankering to build another online community site, this time focussed on another of my interests, ballroom dancing.

As usual, I focus on the Australian market, because it is under served. And there are few things more annoying that searching for an online shop in a particular niche, even restricting the search in Google to Australia, and being presented with a list of American results. Unfortunately the domain I wanted was already taken. And the site looked like it was rarely updated. What a waste.

There was recently a big fuss about the release of Niche Socializer – software to build online communities. A large lead up to the launch, with lots of promise and hype, but no real examples to look at. I like examples. You can look at the code, links, and decide factually if the product has value. There was a definite lack of sample sites – warning indicator number one.

I tried finding samples. Using Google to search for uptodate info isn’t as good as it should be. Even with the Greasemonkey script to permanently have the Google date pulldown (so you can restrict searches to the past 24 hours/week/month/year), I don’t get the results I want. So these days I often end up using search.twitter.com. And then restricting it to the hash keywords, for example searches for #sytycd gets quality results from twitter, by people who really want you to know what they’re tweeting about. Or at least how to use twitter.

But from all my searches on twitter for #nichesocializer since it was launched, today was the first time I found an example site. All the other tweets have been attempts to flog the product. The site I found was http://www.perranporth.tv/. My first impression was how similar it was to phpfox, myspace, elgg and the other online community software packages I’ve looked into.
And the site was slow. It didn’t have a business directory (yet), which I think has to be the first priority for a niche community site these days.

But because of all the hype, plus lack of examples, I didn’t bother with Niche Socializer.

I had tried playing with Elgg, but it didn’t have all the functions I wanted as standard – business directory, in particular. And I couldn’t be bothered building a module, as I just haven’t played with Elgg enough. Even though it has that big bonus – it’s FREEEE.

PHPFOX was my choice. I’ve used it before for mydogspace, very happily. It just keeps getting better. And there are so many add-ons available.

So my new site is now ready. I may have left it too late for the traffic for tonights So You Think You Can Dance final in Australia. I may experiment with twitter, to see if that garners some interest. Haven’t SEO’d the site yet, or even submitted it to directories.

Check it out. It’s free. For dance in Australia MyDanceSpace

An article in the NYTimes entitled MySpace might have friends but it wants ad money provides feedback and direction on the monetization of social networking sites.

Apparently both MySpace and Facebook have not earnt as much as their backers had expected, and would have liked, from incorporating ads on them.

I have to say I feel the same way. I display a few Google Ads on MyDogSpace, and it is the worst performing ad earner of all my sites.

Logically I think it is because people go to the site to hang around and interact. They are there for a purpose – have reached their destination.

It’s very different from ads displayed on information sites. People are looking for information, and if they don’t find it on yours, they will click on a relevant ad that interests them, and may provide a better answer. I earn a lot more from dogs-only.com, as compared to mydogspace.com.au.

Mind you, I haven’t aggressively displayed ads on mydogspace. Especially after the last major software upgrade, which completely replaced most of my templates, including the ad customisation and even seo titles that I had added in. I just haven’t had time to add the ads back in. And mydogspace is much more of a fun site, for me and members.

It’s on my list of things to do, to actively display products from xml feeds on the shopping page, and to auto-rate a product image on the home page, rather than the boring static link that has been there for the last few months.

But directionally it seems that social networking sites benefit their owners most from creating awareness, and sending traffic to the main site, rather than earning money on their own.