Business idea - create social network by piecing together bulletin boards
They aren’t hip, but old-school bulletin boards (powered by old software like vbulletin) have a considerable audience. It would be interesting to buy lots of them, add some social networking goodies, improve the software (ajax, etc) and sell ads on the resulting site(s). Why this would work:
- They are likely cheap to acquire
- Better software could increase visits
- They are mostly hobby sites and don’t have professional ad sales, leading to low CPM
- Monetization could be further improved with behavioral and contextual targeting where appropriate
Often the founders of such boards are an important part of the community - they would have to be offered some amount of continued control as well as an ongoing financial stake, but this could be figured out.
Here is a list of the largest bulletin boards on the net.
