“Castle takes tall nipple. Your move.”

Over at Chesspark.com, we’re up to thousands of games per day, and over 100,000 users (increasing by over 1,000 per day), and are soon to officially launch the next iteration of our software.

Let’s get together and talk Internet Chess biz sometime.

Time to shake up the Chessplaying world!

All the best.

Social Networking ist ja sehr groß in Mode. Wer kennt nicht Twitter und Co. Jetzt Allerdings gibt es auf Chess.com eine eigens für Schach Fans kreierte Social Networking Site. Sich über das Spiel austauschen, gegeneinander spielen, zus…

And, you know, Mike - what do you reckon about these guys who talk of web 3.0? See: http://blogs.britannica.com/bl.....f-the-vine

- TCG

A couple of things of interest from this book — online chess is nothing new, http://www.chessbase.com, http://www.chessclub.com (30K members, been doing it for a long time), http://www.chessgames.com (ditto). That this site has the press buzz, this week, doesn’t mean someone hasn’t been there and done that.

Perhaps smart money would roll these up if they thought the market big enough. What’s telling is that many of the up and coming chess players are pursuing online poker rather than chess, since the money is there — the power of the ‘everyman’ being able to enter perhaps — and being able to win, easier.

http://www.dailycilantro.com/d.....ocial.html

For what its worth, I haven’t spent much time on Chess.com but I’m excited for Erik. This is a niche social community with very specific needs around chess play and tutorial - and as such I think it will deliver value to chess enthusiasts that they can’t find through other networks. And chess is a particularly powerful niche community for an online social network, because the activity itself can be engaged in while online.

More on that. I might love windsurfing, and therefore have a reason to congregate with other windsurfers online, but since my primary activity occurs on the waves, I can only engage in the act of communion around the activity online, not the activity itself. I can’t windsurf while online. With chess, though, I can play while online — in fact, my experience might be enhanced because I can find people to play against.

So having the dominant chess social network could be a very valuable community. Kudos to Erik for landing an awesome domain name, he’s already #3 when you google chess. I think he will do very well with this community and with integrated shopping, advertising, and lead generation, he will build this into a nice business.

I’m really excited. My friend Erik Allebest had his chess social community, Chess.com, picked up on TechCrunch today. The best quote comes in the comments, when ‘CzechMate’ says: Founder is a recent Stanford GSB graduate… Perhaps MBAs aren’t so …

http://www.youtube.com/user/ChessNow

I am the owner of Chess.com Yes, recent Stanford MBA graduate (3 weeks ago!). Feel free to ask me any questions here, or email me at chesscom[at]gmail.

By the way, a new feature is launching today - the ability to play chess asynchronously with your friends online. You make a move, they get an email that tells them you have moved, they login and move, etc.

I’m still in shock…

They should do very well….

No, a site about chess is not exciting to me, but I understand that there is a small group of dedicated people out there who really love chess, and to them this could be incredible. For anyone selling chess related products this will be a great way to target their customers.

The great move in marketing is away from demographic segmentation towards behavioral segmentation. The growth of millions of niche social networking sites will facilitate marketers being able to better find their customer.

#Matt Jones - Yes, I believe the net will continue to fracture just like blogs. There will be a few huge social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace?, other?) but the majority will be smaller more specific ones with far fewer participants.

Will this site make it? i don’t know. I hardly care enough about chess to even look at the site, but lucky for them I am not their target demographic.

And lucky for the rest of us that you can still make a nice profit even if you only capture a small niche market as an audience.

The site doesn’t reveal and WHOIS only shows this…

CHESS.COM, LLC
PO Box 60400
Palo Alto, California 94306
United States