You live at the intersection of your niches
blogging, links June 12th. 2008, 8:56pmFor all of the talk in the blogosphere about niches and focus, it’s almost undeniable that we all live in intersections. Don’t we all have more than one interest? (Yes, besides blogging or social media.) Aren’t we multi-dimensional beings?
I believe that we all live in intersections of interests, backgrounds, and knowledge. In fact, I think we are those intersections personified. And, for lack of a better term, that makes us interesting.
As an example, this is how I would visualize where I sit in the blogosphere.
First off, I don’t claim to be an expert in any one of these areas, but I do have an interest in all of them.
I started off as a personal blogger, although you could rightly argue that I didn’t get terribly personal in the original incarnation of my blog. Most of the people that I enjoyed interacting with in that segment of the blogosphere are in my Blogroll.
Before I dug deep into blogging, I spent a lot of time with social news, bookmarking, and so on. I was very active in Digg, StumbleUpon and other sites at different points in time. I met some interesting people in those communities and I learned a lot in the process.
Lately I’m more interested into the theory and applications of social media and I’ve been participating in more of those conversations. FriendFeed the comment nexus has been a real catalyst for this interest and I’ve been interacting with more cool people (and even more cool people).
I have continously been interested in geeky fun stuff, whether it’s technology or popular culture. This might be a future area of exploration for me. I’m actually hoping to have a guest post at an up and coming pop culture blog (geek culture? Movie/TV/comic books/gaming blog?) in the near future.
So this is the intersection where I lie, because somehow, over time, I manage to blend these interests into Broadcasting Brain.
If we are the sum of our experiences, then it’s inevitable that our interests will bleed into our main niche. Giving ourselves some wiggle room to explore multiple niches helps keep everything interesting, I think.
How about you? What roads meet at your intersection?
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June 12th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
I live here:
Beauty Industry
Small Business
Personal Technology
Happiness
Check out Seriously? A hair hat? from Aura Mae
June 13th, 2008 at 10:50 am
I think my problem is I live at something more like a big traffic circle (too many streets). Part of it is a need to focus but also due to divergence of my entrepreneurial interests from my day job. If I had to pick 4 niches (not counting family):
IT
Intelligent Web apps
Ubiquitous Computing
Robotics
Check out Indiana Jones Is The New American Idol from Chris McCarley
June 13th, 2008 at 11:29 am
@AuraMae and @Chris - thanks for sharing!
June 13th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
I am definitely left of centre in the chart…but then, what else is new? In the PB left hand top corner with my toes over the edge in GFH…I feel like the other stuff is way beyond me though I am really interested in watching it all shake out..
Check out Sabrina breathes a huge sigh of relief! from sammysunshine
June 13th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
I agree completely Mark and sit in a similar position to yourself across the blogging, social media & SEO niches. And ultimately I think this can only be a good thing because it means we can talk across multiple genres and engage a wider audience.
Check out Has Lyndon taken linkbait offline from James Duthie
June 14th, 2008 at 7:56 am
@sammysunshine - there’s always lots to learn.
@James - yes, I like the possibilities that niche overlap provides.
June 14th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
[...] Mark Dykeman wrote a great post noting a few observations about the earliest of early adopters and how the later early adopters are getting in the mix: [...]