A lot of people have been speculating (including myself) that social networks are going to become more niche targeted, and this new service Ning (http://www.ning.com) seems to pave the way. Ning offers a (free?) platform to build your own customized social network.
http://www.ning.com/about/about-us.html
Check out the network someone built for the ever popular Penguins site.
This is the main network
And here is one user:
http://pengspace.ning.com/profile/CODY5575
Notice that he is part of the PengSpace network and does not actually have his own page. He does however belong to mulitple networks, which takes the myspace model and flips it upside down on it's head. Also within PengSpace there are individual groups (similar to myspace) created as well.
Here is another that CW network created for One Tree Hill.
It will be interesting to see how these personal social netowrks grow over the year and what effect it will have on major sites like facebook and myspace.
