Today is the fourth anniversary of The Brothers Brick!
I said last year that 2007-2008 was the year that The Brothers Brick transitioned from “just a LEGO blog” to a full-fledged LEGO fan community. While this community that we all belong to continues to grow, 2008-2009 may be the year that The Brothers Brick transitions from “just a LEGO blog” with a large fan community to trusted LEGO news source.
Unlike years past, the broader LEGO fan community didn’t experience any major crises during 2008-2009. Brickshelf is still around, and little plastic bricks continue to be available just about everywhere. Nevertheless, a number of interesting trends emerged in the last 12 months.
Power to the people!
Two key events in 2008-2009 demonstrated how much power organized groups of consumers can have in their relationship with the company that produces their favorite little plastic bricks.
The headline: Dear LEGO: We want 7979 Castle Advent Calendar!.
In news that shocked and saddened LEGO Castle fans outside Europe, The LEGO Group decided not to release 7979 Castle Advent Calendar in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and many other countries.
The set was the first to have the jester, peasant girl, and new witch.
While many of us promptly found other channels to import them ourselves (Josh and I ordered five or six from Italy), we collectively worked to find a way to get the set to more fans elsewhere.
LEGO heard our hue and cry — thousands of votes on our poll, 80+ comments on my “Dear LEGO” post, and 100+ comments in a thread on Classic-Castle.com. Although changing LEGO’s supply chain and marketing plans proved impossible, North American LEGO Community Team member Steve Witt tracked down a pallet of sets in a distribution center in Tennessee, and managed to prevent the sets from being shipped back to Europe or destroyed (!).
Thanks to this community activism and the quick thinking of community advocates like Steve, hundreds of LEGO Castle fans were able to get their hands on this lovely set. (Here’s hoping we don’t have to repeat this for the rumored LEGO Pirates Advent Calendar this year!)
The headline: LEGO Pick-a-Brick price increases on LEGO Shop at Home.
When The LEGO Group dramatically raised the prices of many individual bricks available through the online Pick-a-Brick service, LEGO fans here and elsewhere rallied together to express how upset we were with this change.
We talked to our LEGO Ambassadors. We called LEGO ourselves. We sent letters.
In the unprecedented move that followed, a large multinational corporation changed its pricing structure based on direct consumer input.
Enter the n00b!
As the LEGO fan community grows, and as children who grew up with computers are set loose on the Internet younger and younger, the adult LEGO fan community is forced into situations that require interactions with these younger LEGO builders.
Despite stellar efforts by community leader Sean Kenney, MOCpages has become a byword for childish behaviors and ineffective communication. Similarly, children violating Flickr’s 13-and-older terms of service continue to flood LEGO-related groups with blurry photos of Rainbow Warriors, trade requests, and indecipherable chatter.
Plagiarism and outright copyright violations have emerged as major problems, particularly on LEGO.com. Children have even submitted photos to contests of LEGO creations built by prominent adult fans — and won. In the absence of careful moderation (at least looking for plagiarism) by LEGO, the Brick-Busters group on Flickr scours LEGO.com, identifies the real owners, and reports violators.
How the adult fan community will respond to the broader issue in the long run — are these things a threat or an opportunity? — remains to be seen.
All about you, by the numbers
- 1,200 registered readers
- 4,600 subscribers to the RSS feed
- 3,526,161 visits
- 8,277,564 page views
- 1,291,240 unique visitors
- 1,400 new posts
Readers of The Brothers Brick are just about everywhere in the world.
Starting last year, I began listing the top 30 countries where our readers come from (seems more interesting than just the top 10). The overall list hasn’t changed very much, but Hong Kong jumps nearly ten places and South Korean edges out South Africa for #30.
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I believe the biggest change in our keywords reflects the shift of the blog to trusted LEGO news source. Though we continue to get many links from non-LEGO sites, more and more “sibling” LEGO sites are linking to news stories on The Brothers Brick.
| Top Keywords* | Top Categories | Referring Sites |
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* Excluding variations on “The Brothers Brick”.
With the exception of a post covering our post-apocalyptic display at BrickCon 2008 and two very large LEGO battleships, the 10 most popular posts were all news items.
- Zombie Apocafest 2008: Children, avert your eyes!
- Ed Diment finishes HMS Hood – in 20-foot-long minifig scale!
- 10193 Medieval Market Village to be released in 2009
- First pictures of 2009 LEGO sets
- First pictures of LEGO Power Miners sets
- 2009 LEGO Star Wars box art
- Possible 2009 LEGO sets [Rumor]
- LEGO Star Wars 10188 Death Star pics reveal interior and 21+ minifigs
- LEGO and Brickstructures present LEGO Architecture
- LEGO battleship Yamato, largest LEGO ship ever, completed after 6 years
Finally, stuff for the historically minded:
I think its weird that TBB’s birthday and mine are on the same day. congrats!
Congrats guys!
Hooray for TBB! And here’s hoping you guys will someday become old enough to buy LEGO TECHNIC ;)
Congrats! I’ve been reading this blog from the first post and I never miss it. While doing a search I ran into (I can’t remember how) your Cloud figure, and I’m a huge FFVII fan. I’m actually playing it now for at least the 5th time. I then found the blog and the rest… happened later.
Happy birthday TBB! :D
I am glad to see that Hong Kong readers contributing to Brothers-Brick, and specifically mentioned. Personally I check the blog a couple times every day.
Thanks for all the news and great work being highlighted here.
You are quite a force in the Lego community now. That’s good, as far as I am concerned.
I hope to grow old with TBB. :-)
Happy Birthday Brothers Brick!
(now set up a Twitter feed)
:-)
Dr. S.
Love the birthday post, lots of great memories!
And thanks for mentioning Brick-Busters — I just joined; I haven’t had anything ripped off (that I’m aware of), but I’m glad to keep my eyes open and help out, now that I know. The AFOL community is (IMHO) already strong at self-policing in a friendly, respectful manner, but as we continue to expand at an exponential rate, this sort of semi-organized effort will grow in importance, and it is good for the mature ones in the community to step up to help train and grow those who are not quite as mature. Not that I’m saying I’m mature — heh, I’m a grown-up who still plays with LEGO. :)
Interesting to see Nuklearpower.com mentioned as a referrer.
Does it tally by number of people coming from that site, or how many times it’s mentioned on the website?
Because, as far as I know, Brian Clevinger’s (the owner of the website and creator of 8-Bit Theatre) only linked here once.
Anyway:
(Ignore the video. It has nothing to do with things. It’s all about the song)
Happy Birthday The Brothers Brick!
Here’s to many more.
Happy Birthday TBB!
Congratulations on TBB’s graduation from Duplo.
Here’s to many more birthdays in future.
Happy Birthday, Brothers Brick! You’ve certainly become a part of my daily routine and for sure a trusted Lego news source. It really has been a roller coaster of a year. I think also not mentioned is the selection of sets from Lego this year has been pretty strong. Previously there has been a slew of very weak sets and a small assortment of good ones if any but this year its the other way around. Also, isn’t the new format where we have to be signed in to comment new this year too?
A few months ago I didn’t know what a Noob was but many of them have become the bane of my existence. Quite a few of my MOC images have been stolen and entered into challenges and contests and such…some of them multiple times for the same event…which really should have alerted the admins…but yanno.
Once again happy birthday, and here’s to many many more! Now that you’re old enough, go play with some System Lego!
“As the LEGO fan community grows, and as children who grew up with computers are set loose on the Internet younger and younger, the adult LEGO fan community is forced into situations that require interactions with these younger LEGO builders.”
I think you forgot that you’re playing with a children’s toy
“Similarly, children violating Flickr’s 13-and-older terms of service continue to flood LEGO-related groups with blurry photos of Rainbow Warriors.”
Sure, its against the rules, and they shouldn’t be online. But if they aren’t here, and they don’t start learning now, they’ll just be flooding the groups with crap at age 13, rather than before.
I hate that enter the noob thing its not right to all teenagers only to those little 8 year olds. Im not an adult yet I dont post mocs done by other people to win a contest and I dont have blury pictures just look at my flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/finsomanmooney/
Congratulations! This is, in my opinion, THE site for Lego news and pics!
Congratulations, and many thanks for all the effort you guys put in the website.
Next we take North Korea, Turkmenistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Somalia, Chad, Central African Republic, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, and Western Sahara.
^ Ooops! Serbia. Misread the map.
It’s been a great ride. I cannot believe you guys have been doing this so reliably and so well for all this time. I remember how excited I was when you guys started and it has just got better. Keep up the good work!