[Air-l] Social networking hobby sites

[Caroline Haythornthwaite]

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 at usyd.edu.au>  
>Subject: [Air-l] Social networking hobby sites  
>To: "air-l at listserv.aoir.org" <air-l at 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