Last week mashable reported about a new social network called collegeonly.com.
As the name indicates this network is only thought for college students, only open to a few unis so far and you need a university email address to register.
Hold up.
Didn’t we have that once already?
That’s right, this is pretty much how facebook started out in 2004. However, now that facebook has become this colossus and mainstream, in the US there is potential in the same niche market facebook once took off from.
And in Germany?
Facebook competitors (if you want to use that word) are losing ground to the book. Since it added German to its offered languages in 2008 and thereby entered the German market, members are wandering off to facebook from the former market leaders more and more.
Just as an example, the ‘VZ’ network (studivz.net, meinvz.net and schuelervz.net) as many believe has no future. Unfortunately their traffic development according to alexa.com supports that theory:
So why not look at the US market once again (afterall that’s how studivz got into being in the first place) and stop trying to fight inevitable?
I mean, in the US it took 6 years for the demand to pop up again, facebook has been in Germany for 2 years, taking off one or two years as things are developing a lot quicker these days, so that’s maybe another 2 or 3 years until the same demand should occur, right?
The question is though how the German sites will survive until then.