Why Are Open, Niche Communities Becoming More Popular?

Kaustubh Katdare

Kaustubh Katdare

@kaustubh-katdare
Updated: Jul 30, 2025
Views: 308

Does the future belong to open, niche communities? One of the community managers of a Slack Group (a closed community) asked this question and the replies were wild. I thought it’d be a great discussion for fellow community managers.

The discussion touched upon several important points such as-

  1. The social media is becoming unreliable with its algorithmic changes

  2. Social media reduces organic reach after certain follower-count

  3. Majority of content on social media is now AI-written and lacks authenticity

  4. People are looking to interact with real humans and not bots

I’d love to hear thoughts from fellow experienced community builders. Let me know what you think.

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  • Paula Derrenger

    Paula Derrenger

    @paulad • Jul 29, 2025

    Great question, Kaustubh. I am not predicting the death of social media yet. However, it's true that it's full of shitty content. My LinkedIn feed is filled with clickbait posts, people posting their job updates and achievements. It's rare to find a useful post. The same is with X.

    You are absolutely spot on that humans are already looking for real humans to interact with - and that's the reason niche communities are blooming.

    The problem with closed communities is that they are difficult to discover organically. Unless someone refers you or you already are a part of a group - there's no way to discover these communities.

    Open communities allow organic discovery of the community through user-generated content.

  • Richard M

    Richard M

    @richard • Jul 30, 2025

    People are looking to interact with real humans and not bots

    Good observation, Kaustubh. We operate a private Slack group and onboarding new members is painful. We relied on LinkedIn and X to improve the reach of our community; but couldn't justify the ROI. Social Media is a lost game.

    I see the return of traditional forums big way in coming years. The shift from social media to niche forums and communities is inevitable.