Speciality networking sites help people connect online and advertisers target their message

Jeff Wurtz of Garden Grove was teaching business classes at Long Beach City College and was astounded to learn that his students spent hours every night on MySpace, the social networking Web site.

He started researching online networking, using his students as his focus group.

When Facebook, another social networking giant, expanded beyond its original audience of college students, Wurtz decided that group could still be a lucrative niche.

He started Lymabean in a Huntington Beach office across the street from Quicksilver with some friends and family capital. The beta test started in April with full launch scheduled in the fall.

Lymabean is part of the burgeoning phenomenon of online social networks, which are interactive Web sites that typically allow members to create profiles, develop groups of friends and share information.

MySpace (117 million members) and Facebook (70 million members) are the industry giants. Others are looking for niches that feel lost in those crowds.

The number of specialty social networks is estimated in the hundreds today. Ning, which provides a platform for anyone to start a social network, projects there will be 4 million by 2010. Many say they will augment, not replace, MySpace and Facebook. The rapid growth has given rise to aggregators that allow people to communicate across all their social networks in one place.

Judging from Ning's site, the possibilities for specialty social networks are virtually limitless: firefighters, hip hop fans, street basketball players, people with diabetes, readers of Jam magazine in India.

"A sense of community is important; people like their town squares," said Pam Waitt of Laguna Hills, who just started OCFace, a social network just for people in Orange County.

Wurtz agreed. "Fifteen-year-olds don't socialize in the same physical places as 60-year-olds. To think they will online is wrong."

Like portals in the 1990s, most of the social networks are likely to fade away. Many of the network creators aren't in it for the money. They are passionate about a topic, want to learn how to build online communities or seek to provide a service.

OCFace is an outgrowth of OC Standard, to online city guide that Waitt started in 2004.

"People kept sending me e-mails suggesting it so I knew it was inevitable," she said. "As it grows it will become even more nichey. Within OCFace there will be groups just for Laguna Niguel or real estate or local bands."

The site's Google Ads pay the Web site hosting bill, and Waitt has no grand scheme for making money off social networking. "It's just a service of OC Standard," she said.

Similarly, Jonathan Good, partner in Wundermarx/PR in Tustin, created Dezumo, a social network for creative people, "because I wanted to get more experience building social networks. I think they will change the way we do business."

Good already knew there was more to social networks than Facebook and MySpace. He belongs to more than 30. His agency has already created blogs for many clients. He wants to be knowledgeable when they start asking how to create niche online communities.

He's allowing Dezumo to grow on its own. Most of the members are people he knows or friends of friends.

Like OCFace, the only current revenue generator is Google Ads.

But Good is already working on the marketing for a more serious social network: Greenwala for individuals and companies that want to preserve the environment created by Rajeev Kapur, former chief executive of Smart Homes/Smart Labs. It has some professional investment funding and involvement of people who have been active in building "green" homes.

While Good plans to limit Dezumo to advertising revenue, Greenwala will pursue affiliate marketing, sponsorships and pay-per-user-action.

On the other hand, Lymabean is being built on a for-profit business model that Wurtz, who used to work for Deloitte & Touche accounting firm, hopes will change the way Internet advertising is done.

Instead of banner ads, Lymabean might sell its background for a three-week ad campaign for the latest movie aimed at college students.

"This was a take-away from my collage classes," Wurtz said. "I'd ask my students to tell me where the banner ads were on MySpace. Everyone knew. I'd ask name one product you saw advertised on MySpace last night. They didn't remember one ad. It was like they mentally TIVO'ed past them. We want to make advertising more natural to the site."

Lymabean also allows local businesses and organizations to be on the site in order to develop a local search database for each college community.

If Lymabean succeeds with users and advertisers, it will become a model for social networks for other niche audiences, Wurtz said.

Bank of Americahas taken the opposite approach to a social network it has set up for small business owners. The site, SmallBusinessOnlineCommunity.com, isn't intended to make money or be an advertising vehicle for the bank's business services.

Small-business owners don't have to be bank customers to join and the only indication of the site's ownership is a "powered by Bank of America" logo in the upper right corner.

"We stripped it down so the focus in on small businesses talking to each other," said Chris Adams, senior vice president of small-business e-commerce. "It came out of feedback we've gotten from the 4 million small businesses we interact with. There's a real need out there to connect with each other and learn to better run their businesses."

For example, when the owner of a buffalo wings and pizza restaurant in Mission Viejo business owner asked for marketing advice, he received 38 responses from all over the country.

Will the bank expand to other customer niches or try to make money from the site?

"For now, we're comfortable with the strategy of helping small businesses," Adams said.

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Original Article:

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/social-site-people-2048215-networks-business