Never let market size fool you into making a misconceived target market choice. Social media pioneer Ning wisely gave up its Facebook-inspired dream of success with millions of consumers to serve a much smaller set of business customers instead. In making the change, its customer base grew from 17,000 to over 100,000 according to Fortune Magazine, while the certainty of paid subscriptions replaced uncertain advertising revenue. Ning’s software enables its customers to launch and run their own private social network with employees, customers, fans or suppliers. The switch from consumers to organizations emerged from the CEO shutting down Ning’s free service. Consumers jumped ship for one of the 125 plus free social media Facebook clones. With a narrower but relatively under-served target market, Ning was free to add services that deepen and differentiate its value to business customers. Additions include analytics for the…