Last year at W3C I gave a talk about how monolithic social networks would give way to more niche networks for a multitude of reasons.  I got a lot of strange looks that day, but in the 14 months since that talk, some evidence is popping up that niche networks and websites will gain more importance to both users and developers.

Late last week AOL launched a new, and some are calling a “super niche” site, for PC gamers, BigDownload.com.  This site will provide PC gamers downloads and the latest gaming news.  We have launched many niche sites over the past year, and have more to come later this year.

These niche sites obviously are more attractive to not just users, since it gives them specific information they are looking for, but also advertisers since they can reach and target a specific audience.