I think focused communities are where it's at. Why? Because focused communities have needs that aren't served via general-purpose platforms like Facebook. Exam

I think focused communities are where it's at. Why? Because focused communities have needs that aren't served via general-purpose platforms like Facebook. Example: Running communities tend to want to share their runs. Facebook is really bad for that, so they gravitate to apps that auto-plot their runs on a map. They might share a screenshot on FB with their friends, but FB isn't enough form them. And FB will never add that feature (auto-mapping runs) to their platform because it just isn't used enough. Another example: Let's say you're an EV data freak and want to plot range/mph/temperature/electricity usage data for your EV. Well, you can upload that into a site (any site) as raw data...or take a picture...but wouldn't it be better if you could embed that data into a site so other people who share your obsession could use it for their analysis? Then you could plot general EV usage stats vs temperature vs speed for EVs around the world. Basically, general-purpose platforms are good at lowest-common-denominator sharing, but if you really want to dig into the data they're not going to work so well. There's always room for more platforms. Whether it's a wide-ranging platform is sort of irrelevant at the start. Remember, Facebook was created so people could connect with each other before college started (and a facebook was a bunch of headshots that the registrar sent out to everyone so you could theoretically recognize people). If the site is focused enough and meets a community's needs and is not a PITA, users will flock there. That assumes you do some kind of marketing, of course.