Lego's New Social Network
Have you ever resigned yourself to sitting on your own in your bedroom building Lego because your friends didn’t share your passion? Or holding in the urge to post an amazing model on Facebook because you know it will be ignored or your hobby ridiculed?
If you eat and breathe Lego and want to connect with other people who are the same, you are now in luck. On December 15th 2011 Lego launched their new social network Rebrick which has been designed to allow users to upload Lego photos quickly and easily for other fans to see. The photos don’t have to be the users own, in fact, they can have originated from anywhere on the web and have simply caught and impressed the eye of an enthusiast.
It is essentially a site where users can bookmark pages from other sites which they want to share with fellow fans thus turning ReBrick into a platform bringing together all other social networks and fan pages. Lego says that it has not been developed to compete with the other Lego networks such as BrickShelf and Brothers Brick but to compliment them and act as a content index. It is also great for highlighting creations which have been posted on YouTube and Flickr, the platforms many fans favor.
By adding the URL of a page to ReBrick, the site grabs the multimedia content within it and displays it’s pages simply and efficiently. It has some similarities to the king of social networking Facebook as, when a photo has been shared it can be viewed and ‘liked’ or ‘tagged’ by the community. There is also the option to have discussions at the ReBrick Hub where ideas and opinions are thrashed around on a daily basis. ReBrick, which is completely separate to LEGO.com, a site primarily for children, was designed or at least guided by the main players in the Lego community, who provided their input from a fan point of view. Over 500 people are rumored to have been consulted and even the name was thrown out to suggestions from the die-hard fans. Brick is the generic name for pieces of Lego hence the final name choice. Users have to be over 13 and the site is still in the Beta stages meaning lots of alterations and changes are likely to happen over the next few months after feedback from users. It is a very simple site as it stands but does the job it was designed to do and means that no Lego fan needs to feel alone, ever again.
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