Lion Brand Survey Highlights Thriving Online Yarn Community

Prior to launching the YarnCraft podcast we took a survey of our newsletter subscribers to find out more about yarn enthusiasts online. We talked about the results on our first podcast, and now we would like to share the results in full.

We have just published a news release with the results of our survey - click here to read the results, download some images and hear some audio from our CEO David Blumenthal.

Best of all, we were able to get a few quotes from Lion Brand customer’s favorite blogger, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee of Yarn Harlot:

“I’m enormously flattered and pleasantly surprised to be selected as the favorite blogger of Lion Brand customers.”

“The internet has fueled the socialization of knitters - it’s great having an outlet where someone does want to talk about your new buttonhole technique or the beautiful hand-dyed merino you just got. It’s become a huge knitting community - and while you might walk away from projects, you don’t walk away from people, so the community continues to grow.”

In case you don’t want to click through to the release, here are the core facts:

• Lion Brand Yarn conducted a survey of their newsletter subscribers to inform the launch of their new YarnCraft podcast with results highlighting the vibrancy of the online knitting community.

• 52.7% of survey responders read blogs while 50.4% listen to podcasts. This exceeds the most recent Pew Internet and American Life Project figures that show that 39% of Americans read blogs and only 12% download podcasts.

• The growth of the online yarn community is in line with another recent Pew Internet Report ‘Hobbyists Online’ that found that 83% of online Americans have used the internet to pursue their hobbies.

• One in three survey responders turn to blogs for information about knitting and crocheting while one in four sourced information from knitting podcasts.

• MySpace is the social network of choice with 35.6% of responders reporting to be members. Facebook and Flickr are next most popular.

• One in four responders have already joined the knitting social network Ravelry. Launched in May, Ravelry has over 21,000 users and a waiting list stretching to close to 15,000 more.

• Yarn Harlot is the most popular blog for Lion Brand customers, ahead of Crazy Aunt Purl and Mason Dixon Knitting. Lion Brand customers nominated Lime and Violet, Cast On and Stash and Burn amongst their favorite podcasts.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to the survey!

Posted in Blogs, Crocheting, Knitting, YarnCraft | 10 Comments »