I don't think it would be too hard to attract a 'name' if you got a little bit of headway. If you chose, say, mountain biking, it wouldn't be that hard to get some endorsement from whomever the mountain biking celebrity du-jour is. In niche fields like this the top guys are pretty accessible.
Mountain biking has a solid fan base, worldwide, and the guys that are into it aren't afraid of spending several thousand on a bike, plus all the bits and pieces that go with it. They're also generally young, single and male, which dovetails nicely with an internet demographic. After all, you can't go out at night. That means there's ad dollar to be made. There's also a vast amount of technical know-how that goes into the sport, both from a how-to setup your bike, how-to do particular techniques, and where to go. A lot of this is currently buried in forums with crappy interfaces and broken searches.
A niche area like this isn't going to get you bought for 10 million, but a couple of talented guys could make a nice living doing something they love, which isn't to be sneezed at.
There are so many other niches that spring to mind crying out for a better problem-solving model than forum postings, which is really what SO is. It's true that Yahoo answers could enter any of these markets, but with branding and endorsements, a dedicated site would outstrip Yahoo answers without much trouble.
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I don't think it would be too hard to attract a 'name' if you got a little bit of headway. If you chose, say, mountain biking, it wouldn't be that hard to get some endorsement from whomever the mountain biking celebrity du-jour is. In niche fields like this the top guys are pretty accessible.
Mountain biking has a solid fan base, worldwide, and the guys that are into it aren't afraid of spending several thousand on a bike, plus all the bits and pieces that go with it. They're also generally young, single and male, which dovetails nicely with an internet demographic. After all, you can't go out at night. That means there's ad dollar to be made. There's also a vast amount of technical know-how that goes into the sport, both from a how-to setup your bike, how-to do particular techniques, and where to go. A lot of this is currently buried in forums with crappy interfaces and broken searches.
A niche area like this isn't going to get you bought for 10 million, but a couple of talented guys could make a nice living doing something they love, which isn't to be sneezed at.
There are so many other niches that spring to mind crying out for a better problem-solving model than forum postings, which is really what SO is. It's true that Yahoo answers could enter any of these markets, but with branding and endorsements, a dedicated site would outstrip Yahoo answers without much trouble.