If it weren’t for Maker Media and all of its associated products – Maker Faire, MakerCon, MakerShed, and Make Magazine – I probably wouldn’t have a job. Beginning with a bimonthly magazine, the Makers of Make then launched an annual event in the Bay Area that gradually led to 131 Maker Faires of various sizes around the world. A driving force in the DIY scene, Making soon evolved into a global phenomenon. And, now, Making has its own social media site, MakerSpace.
Maker Media’s new social media site is an almost obvious extension of their Maker ecosystem, meant to connect Maker Faire participants all around the world. CEO Gregg Brockway tells TechCrunch, “Communities are built around strong cores and the core for us is the Maker Faire but you see so much during the faire that you can’t remember. We want to move that excitement and innovation online so you can connect with the makers on there.”
On MakerSpace, users will be able to share projects and follow one another. Like Facebook, project updates will appear to followers in their home page newsfeed. In this way, MakerSpace is one part Instructables and one part Facebook, providing a knowledge resource and a place to socialize with other Makers online. And, while they won’t be able to sell their own projects quite yet, Maker Media will be able to sell its own products (magazines, books, Maker Shed stuff) on the site, with Maker Media founder Dale Dougherty saying, “They’ll all sort of flow together.”
As Tech Crunch’s Sarah Buhr points out, the fact that this weekend’s Bay Area Maker Faire will have more than 1,000 Makers exhibiting and that Maker Media anticipates more than one million attendees to their Maker Faires around the world, MakerSpace could have a lot of potential sign-ups and, therefore, Maker Media customers. Brockway, however, says that it’s about Making, “We are all about developing and inspiring more makers and MakerSpace is a step in the right direction in building that foundation.”
The site is in limited beta until May 18. I’ve requested an invite, but Maker Media says that the site has about two thousand exhibitor test profiles from the Bay Area Maker Faire. Then, it will launch to the general public later on in the year at a date yet to be determined. With the company’s already strong presence in the Maker community, I wouldn’t be surprised if the site was successful. Then again, I signed up for Ello and promptly forgot about it. Then again, I didn’t think anyone would use Twitter and now I’m the laughing stock of the Twitterverse. Still, in order for MakerSpace to really be successful, I do think that it will need to ensure that it puts the needs/wants of its users over Maker Media, perhaps allowing them to sell their own goods and limiting Maker Shed ads. The last time a Maker-friendly company became Maker-unfriendly, the DIY community virulently rejected it until Stratasys had write said company off as a good will impairment charge.
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