

Why Facebook can't match Ravelry, the social network for knitters. - seto28
http://www.slate.com/id/2298584/

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liedra
The article hit the nail on the head - this community was built from within,
by people who know and love their craft.

It's hard to see a similar thing becoming a more "general" community -
reputation is a strongly guarded thing in these tighter-knit communities (woe
betide you if you rip someone off on a pattern or steal money/etc. from other
knitters, or don't come through on a swap).

Also it's a great way to get involved in the indie craft scene. Crafting
materials can be hard to acquire, especially good quality and variety of
fibres and yarns, so it's great to be able to go to the source of indie dyers
and spinners to get hand-made and custom work done. I know of several indie
dyers who would not exist if it hadn't been for Ravelry. Anyone can have an
immediate audience for their related goods and services, and there is a great
appreciation for quality work (whether it is dying, spinning, or pattern-
designing). This sort of immediately accessible feedback is really good for
community building.

I don't think it'd be a good idea for all communities to copy Ravelry piece
for piece, since it's such a contextual site, but you can certainly think of
Ravelry as a case study for an excellent design and response to user needs.

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noelwelsh
Ravelry is a fantastic social network. It has a load of innovations worth
copying. Two examples:

\- On Rav anyone can create a new discussion forum, and the creators are
responsible for moderating it. It allows the community to continue to grow and
embrace a wider range of people who could not otherwise coexist.

\- Rav has a like button for ages. It also have agree, love, and disagree,
IIRC. Disagree might be mistake. It generates quite a bit of heat. If you've
ever had your HN posts downvoted without comment you'll know how annoying it
is.

It's worth signing up even if you don't knit just to check out the tech.

~~~
silencio
There are a LOT more buttons than that, and I enjoy how descriptive they are.
There is educational, interesting, funny, agree, disagree, and love for each
post.

I have to say I really appreciate Ravelry having so many options for voting. I
used to post a lot in one of the tech forums on Ravelry, especially in reply
to one person that kept posting information that was secondhand and wildly
inaccurate. Unfortunately, she would have her own groupies (for lack of a
better term) that would vote her comment as educational/agree/love. I would
also have people that backed me up in the same way. If you didn't have any
disagrees (for which I had far less than she did) you wouldn't be able to
easily tell who to listen to. Nor is a straightforward up/down type voting
system the best in a discussion.

I think that system is fabulous especially for forums and discussion mediums
(see also: slashdot). Not so much for something like reddit or twitter where
only one or two options is probably the only sane option to provide for many
reasons.

~~~
noelwelsh
I knew I'd forgotten a bunch of the buttons... You just reminded me about the
"your ears are burning" feature -- if your name is mentioned in a thread you
get a message about it, so you can jump in and see what people are talking
about.

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cubicle67
So we have a popular social website, 1.4 million registered users, huge
amounts of content, innovative discussion and a fanatical userbase, and it's
all been coded and maintained by one person? Awesome!

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brudgers
The title of the article is misleading because it ignores fundamental
differences between online communities and online social networks in the sense
of Facebook, Myspace, etc.

While Facebook may have areas in which digital communities form, it is a
constructed primarily to facilitate and track communications between people
with existing real world relationships - for users it is ateleological. On the
other hand, Ravelry has a sense of purpose - better knitting - which creates
an overall community.

People on sites like Ravelry interact extensively and willingly with people
they only know and often meet online because they are members of the same
digital community. This is generally not the case with Facebook _et al._ where
interactions are largely between people who have met face to face at some
point. This means that Ravelry's social graph is constructed digitally on the
site - unlike Facebook, for online communities where one went to junior high
school is far more difficult to determine and there's no reason for your mom
to join unless she is interested in knitting.

~~~
mmahemoff
I thought those fundamental differences were the whole point of the article
and what makes a community centered around things so useful.

The title isn't misleading to me.

~~~
brudgers
It is misleading because it calls Ravelry a social network despite the
important differences between social networks in the ordinary sense in which
the term is applied to Facebook and online communities.

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amirmc
_"Casey says that hobbyists of all stripes are constantly asking the company
to branch out into other domains. The couple refuses to do that, in part
because they don't have the resources (Ravelry makes enough money for them to
live on, but not enough to hire a second full-time software engineer), but
also because they believe that cloning Ravelry wouldn't work. Instead, they
say, each pastime should have a social site that's built carefully to meet the
needs of that group, and it should be built by people who are active
participants in that group"_

I found this really interesting since StackExchange took the opposite view and
raised a ton of cash. OK, it's not quite a social network but they did take
something that was wildly successful in one domain (Q&A for programmers) and
try to apply the format to other areas. I'm inclined to think that Ravelry's
approach _could_ be applied to other areas (e.g cooking) but it's their
choice.

~~~
JonnieCache
_> I found this really interesting since StackExchange took the opposite view
and raised a ton of cash._

I think it's good that there are some successful people out there who are
questioning the dogma that ambition is the superlative human trait, that it is
somehow wrong to not grow everything as much as possible, or that this should
be an end in itself. Good luck to them.

~~~
lemming
This. I love Ravelry (only conceptually, I don't actually use it) because they
provide a wonderfully human element to the usual tech success story. They
basically built something they love for the love of doing it, and I find that
much more inspiring than any amount of VC or traction.

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arkitaip
If you have the slightest interest in online communities and social networking
I strongly recommend that you sign-up for a Ravelry account and see what the
fuss is about. It's truly inspiring how well-designed the community is with
its knitting specific features and fun interface. If more communities took the
Ravelry approach to social networking Facebook wouldn't have a chance.

~~~
gallamine
I agree. Back in 2008 when I was planning a social site for robotics, I
registered and poked around on Ravelry. Even back then it was on fire.

They raised $70,000 dollars in DONATIONS from their members in order to do
some growth back them. That's insane.

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kellyreid
My girlfriend has been active on Ravelry for some time, and we actually had
dinner with a charming family that she met via Ravelry.

They actually hauled an antique spinning wheel across the country for her,
made us some italian chicken, and regaled us with tales of revolutionary war
re-enactment over dinner. utterly fascinating folk, generous and warm and
welcoming. my girlfriend is now building a business around yarn, knitting and
spinning, and ravelry is, and will be, instrumental to her growth.

it's one of the most impressive community/social network projects i've EVER
seen.

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Tyrant505
So Facebook has a big graph(on school peers and acquaintances.) Not too
interesting, and even becoming a burden. Niches will grow in this next phase
of interaction. The web is still so young.

~~~
silencio
I don't think there's anything wrong with a big or small approach to social
networking, as both are necessary and useful in their own way. I think it's
all about how well the site caters to their audience.

I used to feel that Facebook was just as necessary as Ravelry is to me (I am a
knitter) until they started adding so much extra cruft and decided I want to
read things like friends' comments on posts written by people I don't even
know. So much extraneous information forced into my news feed and into the
site in general made me stop using it as often. That doesn't even begin to
address how anemic friends lists and such are for addressing how people really
interact with the people they know.

In that way I'm really loving what I've experienced of Google+ so far. The
idea of communicating in circles is so thoroughly baked into the product that
it feels effortless to share one thing with, say, my coder friends, and
something totally different to my family, without the other group needing to
see that stuff.

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habitatforus
My mom doesn't get Facebook or Twitter, but she keeps telling me to go to
Ravelry to see the pictures she posts of a new scarf. If knitting is your
thing, the site is horrible addictive.

~~~
follownicholas
My Mom is the same way. She is on Ravelry constantly and absolutely loves it
for the same reasons.

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joeyh
Similarly, Goodreads is a targeted social network for readers. As well as
letting me keep up with what friends are reading, it provides features like
keeping track of books, reviews, etc. I have not seen the kind of development
of community on the site that is described happening on Revelry though.

~~~
michaelchisari
Now imagine if these sites could interconnect with a common, open protocol,
and a user on goodreads could be friends with a user on Revelry.

~~~
joeyh
Doable now with OStatus, is it not?

~~~
michaelchisari
Only partially. A comprehensive social networking protocol isn't available
yet.

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subpixel
I wonder who made the acquisition offer?

