One of the more credible threats to MySpace world domination is Community Connect, the company behind ethnically-targeted social networks like BlackPlanet.com and migente.com. The company hit the media radar in late September when BusinessWeek proclaimed niche networks the "second wave of social networking," and noted that, with an estimated $20 million in revenues, Community Connect could well be the third-largest social network by sales.

This week the company launched music sub-sections on BlackPlanet and MiGente, hoping to exploit their niche advantage. The headline stat is that more than 175,000 Hip Hop artists are already promoting their music on BlackPlanet.com. The Browser doesn't follow the urban music scene as closely as we'd like, but, if we did, we'd no doubt choose BlackPlanet over MySpace for browsing Hip Hop. The same would be true if we were into "Dirty South," which is a sub-genre we'd never heard of until browsing the site this morning.

There's not much blogosphere buzz yet about the new Community Connect initiative, and the content is a bit thin beyond the label-built pages for Diddy and LL Kool J. Still, this sort of move makes sense for Community Connect, and bodes ill for MySpace. As a grizzled vice president of sales at a top media conglomerate once told The Browser: targeted content always wins out over general interest media.