How to bind a community to a website using social networking

Ok a quick social-networking primer for the newbs.

Social networking is something the internet implements all too easy, incidently websites are great at fostering communities, there are several excellent content-management frameworks for easily constructing this kinda of cooking pot for this to happen in.

I think that more generalised communities on the web such as myspace will fall off in popularity a little bit as they are at the high-peak of the "shiny interesting new" curve as my niche-focused and internet savvy patrons jump on board to join social networks that are of benefit to them.

Heres the recipe as i see it, not that ive gone down this path but maybe this will be handy to someone out there on the interwebs, it's a little clearer than the ususual "computers, underpants gnomes, profit" formula.

Each of these points is equally critical as the next.

- Find something that people do as part of their lives that they feel pasionate about, home renovation? making music? restoring cars? pets? something in common everyone loves/hates ? something people collect? who knows

- Create a website for thier niche with the usual social networking gimmicks - "add buddy" - is the core of the social networking community mechanism as it reinforces/creates the links between the nodes

- Provide some tool(s) you can add that the community is going to find unique and _useful_

- General site design etc, however great site design isnt so important perhaps , see myspace pages :(

- Start getting people onboard, you need to create some kind of distribution, seems a lot of web people create all kinds of wonderful websites that people will enjoy using but i think that the further you travel down the path to "a great web-builder" the less time you have for real socialing and the more detached you become from those communities so it becomes harder to get involved with them, you need to strike some balance here i think, u gotta find a way to get down with the users and reach that "snow ball" Critical Mass that will ensure your community web thrives, beyond this i think it may go back to simple old marketing techniques, stand outside your local hardware supplier and hand out flyers for your home renovation social network site etc

- google adsense - chuck some of this in, i dont think people mind and it may make a bit of cash to support the next project, if ur lucky the adsense will focus on the right keywords and give you the right adverts, the adwords-aware person might realise that creating a social networking site for people who are into money - say investors, accountants (accounts and social networking? bad example but you see my point) would yield better adsense returns and advertisements that those people would be more interested in getting something out of.