Why Facebook can't match Ravelry, the social network for knitters.

Why Facebook can't match Ravelry, the social network for knitters.(slate.com)

66 points by seto28 14 years ago | 29 comments

liedra 14 years ago |

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.

noelwelsh 14 years ago |

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 14 years ago | |

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 14 years ago | | |

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.

raleec 14 years ago | |

The coder (Casey) has a blog: http://codemonkey.ravelry.com/

also of interest, the tech behind the site: http://codemonkey.ravelry.com/2010/03/24/ravelry-runs-on-201...

Cyranix 14 years ago | | |

My fiancee knits a ton and loves Ravelry, so naturally I had to read through the dev blog a while back. Has anyone seen anything fun done with the API?

cubicle67 14 years ago |

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!

brudgers 14 years ago |

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 14 years ago | |

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 14 years ago | | |

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.

amirmc 14 years ago |

"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.

arkitaip 14 years ago |

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 14 years ago | |

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.

kellyreid 14 years ago |

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.

Tyrant505 14 years ago |

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 14 years ago | |

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.

habitatforus 14 years ago |

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 14 years ago | |

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

joeyh 14 years ago |

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 14 years ago | |

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 14 years ago | | |

Doable now with OStatus, is it not?

subpixel 14 years ago |

I wonder who made the acquisition offer?

If you're going into a market with no existing competition, lock-in, and network effects, you better use the Amazon model, or you're going the way of Wordsworth.com, which started two years before Amazon, and nobody's ever heard of them. Or even worse, you're going to be a ghost site like MSN Auctions with virtually no chance of ever overcoming ebay.