MOG, a music-oriented social network, launched a test version of its site on Tuesday, one of a number of new networks taking aim at niche audiences.

The Berkeley, California-based startup is intended for people who define themselves through their musical tastes. Like some other new social networks, such as the child-safety focused imbee, MOG targets a specific niche, hoping that will build a loyal following better than general-purpose sites such as MySpace.

MOG members’ profile pages feature all the customary social networking tools—blogging, photos, etc.—done up in a nicely customizable interface. But people can talk about music just about anywhere.

MOG provides a small piece of client software to scrape a user’s music library for display on each profile page. Similar to plug-ins from competitors such as Last.fm, the software picks up on what songs users play on desktop media players and iPods. That data ties in to a 4-million song database, expressed on a dedicated page for every artist, album, and song.

Selling Cool

The company, which raised $1.4 million in angel funding in March, hopes its niche nature will draw in loyal users, but it faces significant competition from many other social networks and music discovery sites, from MySpace to Pandora.

MOG plays up its pop culture credentials, with skins designed by artists like Kinsey, Frank Kozik, and Coop, and musicians such as Molly Bancroft and Frank Black signed up for accounts.

MOG’s business model will be advertising. “There’s no money to be made in selling music anymore. We take an affiliate fee, but that’s not our business model,” MOG CEO David Hyman, a former executive at Gracenote and MTV Interactive, said in a recent interview. His business card reads “MOG: because the web mostly sucks.”

Still, having influence over music sales will be a valuable asset. Consumer-to-consumer taste-sharing applications will drive 25 percent of online music store transactions by 2010, according to research firm Gartner.

Gartner analyst Mike McGuire, who praised MOG for its design, said he agreed with Mr. Hyman’s assessment of the marketplace. “Where he is sitting in the chain, making money off the actual sale might keep the lights on but it’s not going to pay the rent,” Mr. McGuire said, adding that sales of merchandise or tickets could be more valuable.

The Art of Taste-Making

For now, MOG users can listen to 30-second samples of songs. Mr. Hyman said his company is working to partner with an existing music subscription service, such as Rhapsody, Yahoo, or Napster. Future features will include instant messaging as well as streaming radio versions of each user’s music collection.

MOG will not aggregate and analyze users’ music habits to make recommendations, à la the “collaborative filtering” methods of Last.fm, MusicStrands, and others. Mr. Hyman, in fact, contrary to current industry leanings, said he’s no fan of Amazon, Tivo, or Netflix recommendations.

“Taste is really complex, and a lot of it is about emulation,” he claimed, saying the best way to find new music is to surf friends’ and other members’ music collections.

Though Mr. McGuire contended that maintaining a focus on music would serve MOG best, he said he could see the product rolled up into a portal or entertainment company.

Going Niche

MOG is not the only niche social network launching this week. Industrious Kid, an Emeryville, California-based company, put out imbee, aimed at parents who don’t want their kids on MySpace. Another niche social network, MommyBuzz, from Boulder, Colorado-based Moxie Moms, launched June 13.

Niche social networking has been trumpeted as more useful and lucrative than general-purpose hangouts for the last few years, but the theory has not matched the massive popularity of sites such as MySpace and Bebo. Business social networking sites like LinkedIn, which is profitable and has 6 million users, are dwarfed by the tens of millions of young people on unfocused social networks.

But MySpace has seen a lot of backlash for allowing kids to express themselves in adult ways, sometimes attracting unsavory types.

imbee, which launched Monday, gives kids the trappings of a social network, but with the option of complete parental supervision. “Many parents just tend to be hands-off—here’s the keys to the Internet, go for it—and then they’re boohooing when something bad happens,” said Industrious Kid co-founder Tim Donovan, who is vice president of marketing. The 15-employee company has raised $6 million from a group of individuals.

imbee membership is free, but the addition of blogging and other features costs $3.95 per month for one adult and two children. The site requires a credit card to verify members, and kids cannot make online friends without their parents’ approval.

Niche social networks may indeed have different business models than general-purpose ones, which usually subsist on advertising and sponsorships. imbee will not include advertising, though future products from Industrious Kid, such as online shopping and banking for kids, may have ads.

Contact the writer:LGannes@RedHerring.com