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12 social networking sites for niche lovers

In this post we take a look at 12 social networking sites, one or many of which may fit your own areas of interest.
Written by Steve O'Hear, Contributor

This is a guest post by Aseem Kishore, a technology enthusiast and lead blogger for Online-Tech-Tips.

The huge popularity of sites like MySpace and FaceBook has spawned an array of niche social networking sites catered to those who want to reduce their exposure and connect with smaller, more specific groups. One of the most popular niche social networking sites today is LinkedIn, a site with millions of members that is focused on helping people further their professional careers through networking.

However, there are also many other niches that have become popular in their own right. In this post we take a look at 12 social networking sites, one or many of which may fit your own areas of interest.

Fuzzster
Fuzzster is a social networking site for your cats, dogs, or other “fuzzy” pets. The site was started by a pet lover who created profiles for her two cats, which were them promptly deleted by the popular social networking sites. Everyone’s profile pictures on the site are usually their pets or a picture with their pets. You can upload photos and create galleries and albums for your pets!
NurseLinkUp

NurseLinkUp has become quite popular among, you guessed it, nurses. It was built so that nurses could connect with other nurses all over the world, share their knowledge and learn from others and provide a dedicated online community. It’s for professional nurses, student nurses, and anyone interested in nursing or healthcare industries in general. You can create a profile and add your own content.

Vox

Vox isn't a nice social networking site in the classic sense but offers social networking mixed with, mostly, casual blogging. So if you like to blog about and for your family and friends, but at the same time you want to connect with others, then check out Vox. The service was also designed to have strict privacy controls, a feature not such a priority with other blogging platforms like Wordpress or Blogger. You can hide specific posts, pictures, and more.

Yub

Yub is a social networking site for shopaholics! So now instead of shopping online by yourself, you can join Yub and start meeting people who like to buy the stuff you like to buy! Then you can share your advice, share deals, write up reviews of stuff you’ve bought, and create your own fan clubs for items you love! Once you join, you can also earn cash backs on purchases.

Model Mayhem

Model Mayhem is a network for models and photographers. If you’re a model, you can browse through the profiles of hundreds of photographers and find someone whose style you really like. If you’re a photographer, slap up your pics and start commenting on models profiles who you think will be interested in hiring you. They also have casting events that models will be interested in.

Mog

MOG is the place to go for music lovers who want to network with other music lovers. Using MOG, you can listen to millions of full-length songs for free, share your music library playlists, and opinions on music, and discover new music recommended by users who share the same musical taste as you do. You can also write up reviews of songs and post other music related content.

Gather

Gather.com targets mostly older users, particularly over 35, highly educated, and keenly interested in the political and cultural world around them. Basically, the people who tend to listen to NPR on the way back from work! Here you’ll find middle-America good-natured topics such as book reviews, great food for the weekend, and how to age gracefully. There are also chat rooms that range from topics like wine to food to philosophy.

Flixster

Flixster is a social networking site for movie buffs. If you love watching movies, reviewing them, and sharing your rants and raves with friends and others, then Flixster is for you. Flixster is a community for movie fans of all shapes and sizes. You can create your own profile page and fill it with all kinds of stuff like your favorite movies, celebrity photos, movie news, movie quizzes and lots more. A great way to meet people who like a similar genre of movies.

TravellersPoint

TravellersPoint is a community for people who love to travel the world. With over 100,000 people signed up, you can use the site to discuss travel experiences in several destination and topic related forums. There is also a travel guide, which is a custom built wiki in which users can edit destination information to help assist potential visitors. It also has an integrated blogging system that allows travelers to post their own content. Members can sign up as Travel Helpers for countries and assist others traveling there. Another traveling and social networking niche site is WAYN.

TalTopia

TalTopia is a community site for those of us who have talent. It’s a talent community and talent network to help aspiring people with talents to get famous, build industry contacts, and find paying gigs. It’s broken down into several categories including Music, Art, Acting, Comedy, Modeling, Dance, and Other. So if you have a talent for something and you want to see what people think of you, create a profile on taltopia and let people rate your talent.

Cake Financial

Cake Financial is a social network for individual investors allowing members to share their real stock portfolios and performance with other members. Whether you are new to investing or a veteran, you can sign up with Cake Financial to share your knowledge of investing and learn about investing from others. Instead of going at it alone, you can create a network of like-minded investors to help reach your financial goals.

Meetup

Meetup is a fabulous way to connect with other people who live nearby in your city or state and who share your interests. It facilitates groups of strangers coming together on a regular basis to do something productive and useful. There are almost 75,000 meetings arranged through Meetup every month. The interests range from Democratic Party meetups to Poker meetups to Italian meetups!

There are many more niche social networking sites that people use all the time, so feel free to post your favorites in the comments. We’ll follow up this post with another list of niche sites, but in the meantime, check out the 12 mentioned above!

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