Hi Ravelry people! Thanks for dropping by and commenting. It’s clear you are all very passionate, which bodes well for the long-term future of Ravelry.
A number of you have argued that Ravelry is more than just a social network. I agree, and I think this an important development in the business model for these kinds of sites. Flickr was the first “social networking” site that I saw that offered useful features beyond the social network. This is a great model. Few people want to dive into a new community without first spending some time learning the rules of the group. What Flickr does is give you a reason to return to the site before getting involved in the social aspects. So you start of using Flickr just to store your photos and then perhaps over time find your way onto the various groups. In my case I never make use of the social features of Flickr, but Flickr still benefits from my custom. In comparison sites like Friendster give you nothing to do on the site beyond the social interaction, and consequentially I never visit the site.
Where I see Ravelry going beyond Flickr is in acting as an intermediary connecting buyers and sellers in the knitting and crochet community. While Flickr offers some commercial services, it is a very asymmetric model with only a few big sellers. It seems that Ravelry is pursuing a much more egalitarian model, where any community member can easily engage in either end of the transaction. Ravelry is essentially the market maker, and you just have to look at the London Stock Exchange or NASDAQ to see how important this function is. What makes the Internet wonderful is that it allows someone to make a market (and a living) in something as informal and fun as knitting!
Hi Noel,
The Ravelry fun continues. As the fiance of a knitter (Devin had the first comment on your last post), I can say they are a “close knit” group.
We attempted a cultural exchange this year: she taught me to knit, and I taught her Scheme. I’m still knitting but she’s not Scheming.
I just started Microtrends (http://www.amazon.com/Microtrends-Forces-Behind-Tomorrows-Changes/dp/0446580961 — If you’re going to buy Microtrends, don’t forget to use the Ravelry affiliate links. My girlfriend reminds me to do so everytime I make an Amazon purchase), and I wonder if Penn’s thesis doesn’t offer the best explanation: a small but active sub-culture that was previously ignored as too minor by the larger, more traditional marketing forces. I don’t see Flickr as such an example — what sub-culture are they targeting? Ravelry has given knitters a place to congregate and they’ve jumped on the opportunity.
Related reading: http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/03/1000_true_fans.php
-Mark
That’s a fascinating analysis! I especially love the comparison to the Stock Exchange… as we say on Ravelry, “agree(1000)”!
Thanks for the comments, and Mark, thanks for passing on the link. It’s been fun and flattering having so many people interested in our post.
Mark, I agree that the Internet makes it dramatically cheaper to reach a sparsely distributed demographic (in this case, knitters) and this is a large part of the success of many Internet companies. However I think it is a mistake to ignore other factors such as execution and timing. I imagine there were knitting forums before Ravelry but it is the combination of features, timing, and niche that have made Ravelry a success. Just like Facebook is killing Friendster and LinkedIn, by having the right set of features at the time when the first group of Internet savvy teens hit college (I think getting the teen/young adult market is essential here, as their social groups and protocols are far more fluid than older people).
I “are” an older people. I can’t begin to imagine life without Ravelry anymore I log on several times a day now. And, I don’t believe the demographics of the knitting and crocheting community are all that sparse. If you’ve ever attended a Yarn Harlot event, you would know just how understimated our numbers are. The advantage, as is all things internet, is that I can now communicate with “my people” around the world, instead of the limits of reading someone’s blog, or the local functions hosted by LYS or guilds.
The other really valuable thing about ravelry, community aside, is that is an incredible resource for knitters and crocheters. We’re not just (though we certainly embrace) grammys making TP dollies, we are folks of all ages, from all walks of life.
What initially attracted me to ravelry were two things: the constantly-expanding warehouse of data that saves me literally hours of Googling, and the ability to show off my own work for public consumption. Flickr, I believe, has been so successful due to this second factor, the “look at me” factor. People love to show off, else online blogging tools would never have been so popular.
(Ravelry also has an ingenious Flickr integration, allowing members to grab photos from their Flickr account to populate use data. Talk about brilliant!)
Once I started posting my own “look at me” bits and had the personal satisfaction of seeing my name up in lights so to speak, I poked around the forums and found scads of people I could get along with. Since that time the forums are a big part of what I enjoy most about ravelry, but through them I’ve found even more patterns and yarns and websites and blogs and who knows what. It ends up being cyclical.
As for longevity I think ravelry will be in it for the long haul because it’s a very well constructed website, user-friendly but feature rich and nice to look at. The knitting/crocheting/fiber community is also a very passionate one as you said yourself, and to have a place to congregate with other like folk is extremely exciting as it’s not always as easy to find other yarn-obsessed nerds in one’s local community. There will never be a lack of membership, as one commenter said our craft is generally one that is done for life and not just a dalliance.
Personally I try to kick in a ten spot every other month or so, more often if I can swing it. To me this is a pittance to pay for the value the site currently affords me, and I anticipate it will only become more valuable as it grows.
(It really annoys me your comments don’t allow carriage returns. I hope you enjoy my unintentionally huge block paragraph!
{Ed: I’ve been manually formatting everyone’s posts. It annoys me as well. We’re going to switch to a new blog engine soon.]
One person mentioned Casey’s code. It’s pretty amazing, and I wish other sites were as slick.
One thing that hasn’t been mentioned is that Rav is comfortable for people of all ages. There are a lot of women on the site, too. And I think women over 30 are an underserved market when it comes to the internet in general.
Lraveler, that’s an interesting point. I don’t know if women are unrepresented on the Internet in general, or just on the sites I visit. The large female user base was one of the first things that struck me about Ravelry. It would be interesting to know if women use the Internet in a different way to men.