A friend of mine is a knitter. This is an actual friend not
as opposed to those other “a friend of mine has a problem” friends. She loves
to knit. She occasionally blogs about knitting and reads the blogs of other
knitters. And she’s not the only one. There’s a huge, incredibly passionate,
online community of knitters.
When one knitter (who was a photographer by day) wanted to
create a photo-project of knitters sent out a request for participants, he was
inundated with offers. This has led to
the 1000
knitters project where he brings in knitters and photographs them as they
knit a wool scarf, each person taking off where the last person finished.
The traditional image of old ladies being the only people
who knit is apparently quite dated, despite
advertisers telling us otherwise.
One of the interesting things about knitting is that it’s a
very social hobby. The knitting circle is a centuries old entity where people
(usually women both then and now) would gather together and knit and chat.
So why the blog about knitting? My friend told me about a
website she frequents, www.ravelry.com,
what she described as knitting 2.0. Unfortunately it’s in a closed beta so you
can’t just sign up (I tried but there’s a huge waiting list due to its viral
popularity). I did however borrow her log in and go have a shufty about. It’s
one of the best examples I’ve seen of a community-oriented web 2.0 site.
The members of the community are passionate and involved –
they can set up and participate in groups and they can post their current
knitting projects online for other s to view and comment upon as the project
progress. They can rate the materials they use (the types of yarn and the
patterns they work from) and compare their experiences of using them with those
of others. You can easily find people who’ve worked on the same pattern and ask
advice.
The point is that social networks do not have to be like the
facebooks or myspaces of this world – with a goal of having everyone in the
world sign up. A focused involved passionate community can be much more
successful. Ravelry is successful because it’s a friendly, inviting community; where
people are happy to help each other out (often complete strangers) because they
have something in common or can relate to each other.
Leisa Reichalt
mentioned that connecting to others comes from exposing just enough of yourself
to allow others to relate to you; it doesn’t matter whether it’s about an
interest in social networking ot knitting and it doesn’t have to be earth
shattering or phenomenal.