Here's something I have been thinking about - as illustrated by the above doodle I threw into my notebook tonight. Perhaps this is too simplistic, but I have a hunch that if you want to zero in on the up-and-coming social networks, there are really just two demographic groups to study: the young, the geeky and sometimes both.
Think about all of the social networks over the years that were at first dominated by young people and then later went mainstream. Now think about the communities that first developed an audience with geeks and then later when supernova. These aren't mutually exclusive either. YouTube in many ways was a crossover hit. What's your take on this theory? Are there other demographics that make or break a social network the way these two do? I can't think of any. Most follow in the footsteps of the young and the geeky.Image credits: Teen on Flickr by TCollinsPhoto and Scoble and His Gear by Thomas Hawk.
