Tiffany B. Brown

a mish-mosh of stuff

GlobalGrind.com: Niche audience start pages?

UPDATE: GlobalGrind.com has received funding from Accel Partners, a venture capital group who has also funded Facebook and BrightCove. Russell Simmons is involved in the project, which is a startup by the folks who brought you 360hiphop.com. [Via Alarm:Clock]

Also read: Global Grind is Pageflakes for Hip Hop on Mashable and Global Grind: Startpage For Hip Hop Gen?.

Despite being around for a few years, personalized start pages are now the hotness. There’s the classic of this space My Yahoo! Internet big dogs such as Google, AOL and Netscape also offer them. There are even a few kicky upstarts in the game such as Pageflakes, NetVibes, Favoor, and yourminis.com.

But most of these start pages are geared towards a generalized audience with topics like sports, local news and weather. What if your interests are more specific? More urban, perhaps?

That’s (presumably) the rationale behind GlobalGrind.com, which is a lot like every other personalized start page on the planet. Global Grind, currently in an invite-only alpha phase, offers aggregated RSS feeds from around the web. Most of its featured content, however, targets a young(-ish), mostly black American, hip-hop-centric audience. <pure speculation> After an initial poking around, I suspect Global Grind will soon add a community component, where users will have the ability to share and possibly comment on each other’s start pages. </pure speculation>

I won’t veer off into a review, especially since I’ve spent an entire 15 minutes or so with the product. But I think Global Grind could be the first of an interesting wave: personalized start pages that target a specific audience, and promote community. Methinks there’s enormous potential here.

Thoughts? Please share in the comments.

I have 7 more Global Grind invites to share. If you want one drop a line. For some reason the 7 invites I had left have disappeared. Not sure what’s up with that, but will send when/if I get some more.

  • http://www.m-solo.com/ Markus

    I don’t think being niche based alone will do it. If the speculation is true, and Global Grind adds the community component that could separate them from the rest, and puts them in a very interesting space.

  • http://www.m-solo.com Markus

    I don’t think being niche based alone will do it. If the speculation is true, and Global Grind adds the community component that could separate them from the rest, and puts them in a very interesting space.

  • http://www.tiffanybbrown.com/ tiffany

    I think it could work — maybe not for Global Grind — but I think niche start pages could work. Identity, interests and affiliations are really important to people. It may be enough for someone to try Global Grind versus Netvibes.

    Where a niche site would have an advantage is in their content. Global Grind has aggregated an entire world of black bloggers and hip-hop bloggers. You don’t have to go looking for it. That’s quite unlike a general interest start page, and a powerful draw IMO.

  • http://www.tiffanybbrown.com/ tiffany

    I think it could work — maybe not for Global Grind — but I think niche start pages could work. Identity, interests and affiliations are really important to people. It may be enough for someone to try Global Grind versus Netvibes.

    Where a niche site would have an advantage is in their content. Global Grind has aggregated an entire world of black bloggers and hip-hop bloggers. You don’t have to go looking for it. That’s quite unlike a general interest start page, and a powerful draw IMO.

  • bryce

    can you send me an invite … thanks…b

  • bryce

    can you send me an invite … thanks…b

  • http://www.tiffanybbrown.com/ tiffany

    Sorry Bryce, I don’t have any to give right now. As soon as I get some, I will send your way.

  • http://www.tiffanybbrown.com/ tiffany

    Sorry Bryce, I don’t have any to give right now. As soon as I get some, I will send your way.

  • http://myspace.com/deejaygee2007 DJ Gee

    I got an invite for the site a few months ago before it launched and I love it! Its so addicting, and its gotten so much better since the first time I used it. I love being able to customize the pages and I’ve never used RSS feed or iGoogle or anything like that before. I like how Global Grind is made for my demographic, but doesn’t dumb anything down by assuming people involved in hip-hop are dumb or have few interests…thank you Global Grind, for that especially. What else do you guys think about the site??

  • http://myspace.com/deejaygee2007 DJ Gee

    I got an invite for the site a few months ago before it launched and I love it! Its so addicting, and its gotten so much better since the first time I used it. I love being able to customize the pages and I’ve never used RSS feed or iGoogle or anything like that before. I like how Global Grind is made for my demographic, but doesn’t dumb anything down by assuming people involved in hip-hop are dumb or have few interests…thank you Global Grind, for that especially. What else do you guys think about the site??