Company TBD

Pretty simple rule right? Well, easy to say (and many people do) but tough to do.

I’ve been doing a fair amount of research in the online education/learning space and I ran across this techcrunch post on a new ’social learning’ website – Learnhub. Another learning website was mentioned – Edufire.

These two sites illustrate why finding a niche is important.

Edufire is nice and focused – the value to users and tutors is pretty clear. As a student, I can easily find a foreign language teacher, see their community rankings and pay a reasonable fee for language instruction through my webcam. As a tutor, this gives me an easy way to find students and sell my skills for $.

On the other hand Learnhub is not focused. They seem to be targeting all users – from K-12 students, to college prep to professionals. I admire the goal to revolutionalize online education, but the revolution has to start somewhere…with a core set of users. Their biggest community is the GMAT prep – maybe thats a clue as to where they should be focusing. Also, not sure I get why someone would take the trouble to create a course on the site. Unlike Edufire, there is no compensation for content creators.

Of course, there are many examples of ‘unfocused’ sites being very successful (i.e. YouTube). Maybe Learnhub will prove me wrong (it’ll be interesting to watch how this plays out)….but I think education is a huge space and finding a niche is critical.

Which site would you use?