[Air-l] Social networking hobby sites

[mhward]

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