There’s a lot of new technologies breaking on to the scene, especially in the Web 2.0 arena. The press and publicity seems to go to many horizontal players. While these groups have large broad impact, like traditional businesses they can’t serve every niche effectively. A horizontal approach gives you the center of the bell curve, but there are always outliers that have a lot of revenue potential. Look for under served verticals that you can address.

Here’s some examples of recent horizontal players:

1. Facebook, MySpace for horizontal social networking
2. Twitter, Pownce for horizontal micro-blogging
3. YouTube, Revver for horizontal video sharing
4. Google, Yahoo for horizontal search
5. Flickr for horizontal photo sharing
6. Scribd for horizontal document sharing
7. Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon for horizontal bookmarking and site discovery
8. Digg, Reddit for horizontal blog discovery
9. Wikipedia for horizontal information archiving

And I’m sure you can name many others.

With players applying this Web 2.0 community based concept to so many horizontals, it begs two questions for the entrepreneur. One, are there any horizontals left without established players? And two, are there any vertical that are under served by these general, horizontal solutions?

Interesting, I think that there are still large opportunities in the vertical segments. Most of the services listed above do not have broad appeal outside of the technophiles who are in the know. There are millions of consumer and business Internet users who have never heard of some of these companies and services but who can get value.

My suggestion, find an under served vertical, maybe something you already know intimately and see if any of these new technologies can fit. Ask, can I use this for that?