I recently heard a wonderful presentation about a sewing site: http://www.burdastyle.com/ It is commercially oriented, relatively new, and growing quickly. It is expecting to make money through fabric sales but at present is in development and supports a wide community of sewers who adapt the Burda patterns. They have a creative commons approach to their patterns -- they can be used, modified and sold. /Caroline ---- Original message ----
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 09:53:28 +1000 From: mhward <mhward@usyd.edu.au> Subject: [Air-l] Social networking hobby sites To: "air-l@listserv.aoir.org" <air-l@listserv.aoir.org>
There is a new a social networking site for people with fibre hobbies (knitters, spinners, weavers, crocheters etc): http://www.ravelry.com/
In a matter of weeks over 17,000 people are either in the site or on a waiting list - the developers have had to put up a form so people can check where they are on the list to save their own sanity. They have been able to give up their day jobs and work on this fulltime, although it's not clear to me how the money is flowing to them personally. The site is still in beta, which is why they aren't giving all comers free access.
Techcrunch recently poured some sarcasm on this (knitting is often portrayed very negatively on tech sites), but some of the comments are interesting: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/07/15/lets-get-down-to-some-hard- core-knittin g/
Does anyone know of other hobby social networking sites like this that have such big numbers of members/would-be members? I guess that flickr and u- tube would qualify, although they are perhaps less 'niche', but are there others?
M-H
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---------------------------------------- Caroline Haythornthwaite Associate Professor Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 501 East Daniel St., Champaign IL 61820