We all live in our own individual niche, although we seldom think of it that way. When I first began bird-watching, I became aware of the significance of the niche. A large tree will have a bird catching flies near the top. Perhaps a wood-pecker or a creeper will be finding a meal on the trunk. In the shade underneath the boughs, the ground feeders will be scratching out their survival.

That big tree could be a metaphor for the Internet, couldn’t it? A quick search of Google, for any term you can think of, will turn up a host of niche dwellers, all seeming to thrive, in the lush environment of the Internet.

When we think about our friends, work-mates, neighbors, we realize they are all niche dwellers. I can’t confirm this thesis by any reliable research, but I suspect that this tendency to seek out our own niche may have been made necessary by the Industrial Revolution, which began many moons ago. As society progresses and our lives become more complex, finding our own niche to exploit has become a requisite for survival.

It seems that the acknowledgment of the niche is a comparatively recent thing, in Internet terms. But as we can see, the concept has been around for a long time. "There is nothing new under the sun," Solomon is said to have observed. And that prolific inventor, Thomas Edison, once stated something to the effect that an invention does not have to be totally new, merely the application of it, to a new area.

Could this be a fertile field for us to explore? There are those who advocate merely finding a concept which has proven successful in the past and adapt it to present day technology. I suspect this may not be a great breakthrough in creative thinking. With only a little diligence, I feel sure that many examples of this procedure can be found. The most promising place to look may be those concepts which are proving successful today. As additional specialties continue to be forged daily, we can become the new niche dwellers of the information age. Could it be that a new, exciting and profitable niche may be waiting for you? Remember Solomon’s observation, "There is nothing new under the sun."