New industries are usually created by broadly targeted companies, then infiltrated by specialized niche players that have learned from the mistakes of the pioneers. Niche business is good business, if not necessarily glamorous. In search, vertical engines (shopping, local, travel, Weblogs, classifieds) are thriving while Google and Yahoo! try to cover the same bases with specialized products. An interesting one-day conference—Vertical Leap—produced by SDForum is coming up later this month focusing on this phenomenon.
