Aspirations.  Aim high.  Reach for the clouds.  Thing big.  Take over the world.

Not anymore.  More than ever, I’m seeing businesses with small ideas.  Niche ideas.  Some that have symbiotic relationships with other small businesses.  Perhaps there are bigger ideas they haven’t let out of the bag yet?  Here are some examples, and why they might be onto something.  And why they may not be.

1. ShareThis
   This site offers a social sharing button.  An API.  And a Sharebox for users.  That’s it.  At its core, this is a button.  I love it for a few reasons.  It offers the publisher reporting, an API and customization.  Also, if you don’t want to keep up with every sharing service, ShareThis takes care of it for you.  For ShareThis, they own the data on usage of social sharing sites.  Business model – perhaps advertising, perhaps sharing data, perhaps a tiered pay model?  Who knows.  But they got $15 million in funding in March ’08.  Still seems niche and small to me, and it’s dependent on all of the sharing services – which do not yet have a proven business model either.
2. TweetDeck
   This application is a Twitter client.  Twitter is still fairly niche, although many are betting for it to go mainstream this year.  There are also a large number of Twitter clients out there.  And Twitter doesn’t even have a viable business model yet.  Yet, TweetDeck closed an angel funding round at $500k.  I highlighted TweetDeck, but there are a ton of Twitter piggy-backers, like Qwitter, who’s only feature is notification of tweeps that stop following you.   That’s about as niche as you can get.
3. Plinky
   One of the newest entrants into the micro-blogging arena (kind of), Plinky managed to get a lot of hype before finally making its premise known yesterday.  They ask a question each day, and you provide an answer.  They basically just prompt you for something to write about, and allow you to share your response on the social grid.  This managed to get a $1.5 series A.

Is this niche company phenomenon due to the recession, or is this a bi-product of Web 2.0?  I think both.  There’s no question that a bad economy triggers more start-ups.  Enter Web 2.0, and we have all of these opportunities for apps with symbiotic relationships.  If you can run a small business and make a little more than you made working for someone else, why not do it?  As long as these businesses are reasonable to support with small teams, they have a good chance to bring in more than they cost.

But the risk is high.  Twitter, and even the major social networking sites still don’t have proven, viable business models.  If these businesses fail, the ecosystem of apps that are dependent on them also fail.

I love the idea of these small businesses, although finding the apps you want becomes difficult in this crowded app environment.   Enter twitdom.com to solve that problem, too.

TTFN.  I have to go start a micro-biz

If you’re like me, you’re not in the top 5% of Twitter users (regardless of which system you decided is the best at rating you).  Most likely, you follow more than you’re followed.  Perhaps you follow @scobleizer, @davewiner, @skydiver, @mashable, @guykawasaki, or any number of tweeple that have 10,000 to 50,000+ followers.  Have you tried keeping up with the tweets?  I check every half hour or so, and realize that I still can’t keep up with everything that’s been posted despite following only about 150 tweeps.  @scobleizer follows over 20,000.

I remember the Inbox Zero project; epic fail for me.  But what would be the equivalent for Twitter, rather than just missing all the tweets I simply can’t keep up with?  Well, my honest and disheartening opinion is that I have no alternative.

Not today.

But, perhaps, there is some hope?  Let’s take inauguration day as an example.  At least 60% of my friends’ tweets were about the inauguration.  If  my Twitter client could group tweets on similar topics, perhaps this would have saved me from having to read tons of similar posts.  Sounds simple, although I know in practice it’s quite challenging.  Wouldn’t it be a great start, though?

In the meantime, here are some tips:

1. Continue to follow people who follow you.  It’s not social media if it’s not social.
2. Use an application like TweetDeck, that let’s you create groups.  I have one group for people I actually know, another group for news, and another group for social gurus.
3. Perhaps you can’t keep up with all of your friends’ tweets, but make sure you read replies and direct messages.

Want to know how to be interesting enough for people to follow you?  I can’t help you there   But perhaps the @scobleizer and these other folks can.