Making friends with ninjas

It's sure to be the next Facebook. It'll dwarf MySpace.com.

I bring you: The Ask a Ninja social network.

For anyone who's been using typewriters and watching over-the-air television the last couple of years, Ask a Ninja is the hit video blog in which a ninja answers questions about the lifestyle of sneaking undetected into locked buildings and opening victims up with katanas. And things like that.

The hit video blog is launching its own social-networking service.

(Credit: Ask a Ninja)

Well, the audience has gotten so big that the creators have decided to do something that almost no one else has thought of: launch a site on which the video blog's fans can network with each other, create friends lists, leave testimonials--surely about the best suggestions on how to slice up evildoers and the like--and so forth.

Ah, so I kid just a little bit.

The truth is, I'm just not sure how successful a deeply focused social network like this can be. The Ask a Ninja community may be passionate and strong, but is it big enough to support a whole social-networking service? Especially when it's possible to set up focused groups on other networks?

Well, of course, we won't know the answer for a while. But I'm skeptical.

Particularly, because I wonder how members will be able to tell their friends apart when every single one of them is wearing the exact same ninja outfit.