A Community for Everyone: The Rise of the Niche-Focused Social Network

Social networking sites like MySpace, Bebo, and Facebook continue to spread like wildfire as millions of people join these communities to connect, create and share every month.  (MySpace alone already has over 100,000,000 users and grows at a clip of more than 250,000 new members a day!)

While these powerhouse networks continue to capture mainstream media attention, there is a new crop of social networks surfacing (and providing great value to their respective communities) signaling an important new trend: the rise of niche-focused social networks. 

Our own social network, OrganizedWisdom.com, (currently in private beta...so please contact us if you want to help test and give feedback) is a health-focused community making it easy for consumers, physicians, healthcare professionals, and health organizations to collaborate, connect, and share wisdom on more than 6,500 health topics.  We're getting close to public launch in the next few weeks and we can't wait to share it with you.

Taking a brief break from our own site testing, we thought we would share a few links to some of the other interesting niche-focused social networks that aim to change the way you do everything from lose weight to seek parenting advice. 

In the about to explode health and wellness sector alone, each of these communities is targeting a different market segment and topic focus:

Eons.com - A social network for baby-boomer's.

Traineo.com - A weight loss community.

Minti.com - Community networking and advice for parents.

MyMedwork.com - A closed social network for physicians.

Have you seen any other great social networks helping people with health and wellness related issues?  Let us know in the comments section...

And we can't wait to show you the first "health-focused social network, easy enough for mom and dad to use" in a few short weeks...