Rebrick to be relaunched
Posted by Huw,
On Monday LEGO announced that its Rebrick platform is being changed and in future will focus on hosting building contests.
It's possible you have never heard of or used Rebrick because, although well intentioned, it was a solution from LEGO to a problem that did not really exist, so was one that most LEGO fan sites largely ignored. It provides the means to bookmark cool LEGO creations that you find on the Internet and share them with other users. However, because it's largely uncurated, finding anything remotely interesting amongst all the chaff can be a challenge.
It seems that LEGO has recognised its shortcomings so will be scrapping the current platform and starting again with something better suited to hosting contests, which have been one of the more successful aspects of the site in the past. No timescale has been provided for the change.
Do you use the current site? Will you miss it?
12 likes
16 comments on this article
I participated in a few of the contests, which were fun, but I'm happy they are relaunching and changing focus of the site as a whole. I did not like the main aspect/purpose of the site because it was about re-posting other people's builds with little effort being to given to credit the actual builder.
Never heard of it until now.
The only times I ever really visit Rebrick are to read their extremely insightful interviews with LEGO designers and MOCists. I hope those don't stop because I love that kind of stuff.
I never really made use of site's main function, since it would just mean one more place to have to share all my MOCs to. I considered entering their Friends in Space contest but couldn't come up with an entry in time.
I've never really understand that site
Funny, Aanchir. I was wanting to enter the Friends in Space contest, but decided to sort the Friends LEGO pieces by color to help me see what pieces were plentiful in what colors and blah, blah, blah which ended up taking a longer time than expected and I ended up missing the deadline.
That's the only time I peeked at the site. I had forgotten about it.
Pssh, no. Every time I saw an interesting contest submitted somewhere, I clicked the link and I'd always be taken to the front page. I could never get anywhere on that site, it seemed really pointless.
So....this is Pinterest for Lego?
TLG really seems to be overhauling its relationship with users (especially online users) quite thoroughly at the moment. Will Ideas be next? And will they ever get LEGO.com to work? Lately I've had a lot of trouble just seeing what's for sale, never mind ordering it....
@CM4Sci: I have that problem too. Normally when I visit it takes two clicks: one presumably to log me in (which takes me to the front page) and then again to actually go to the page I wanted to visit.
@ericjohn: The Rebrick blog is really worth keeping tabs on, especially behind-the-scenes interviews like these ones:
http://rebrick.lego.com/en-US/BottomMenu/Blog/12022015-samjohnson-designer-interview.aspx
http://rebrick.lego.com/en-US/BottomMenu/Blog/10092013-From-Fan-to-Designer.aspx
http://rebrick.lego.com/en-US/BottomMenu/Blog/10302015-nicolaas-vas-ninjago.aspx
http://rebrick.lego.com/en-US/BottomMenu/Blog/04272015-Only-Perfect-is-Good-Enough.aspx
This is the first I heard of it.
Never heard of it before, I'll stick with MOCpages.
I would love something better developed for LEGO sharing. We are a scattered community currently. I participated via Lugnet when I was 12. Everyone basically had a Brickshelf account for hosting, and we discussed via Lugnet. A few had geocities sites. It was relatively uniform and all inclusive.
Now, I'm on flickr and that's about it, but the experience is far from optimized for LEGO fans.
Rebrick has potential, but I never found any use for it in its current form.
^Chouju_X- The fact many Flickr users see MOCpages as dead is ironic seeing how dead a site like Rebrick has been (I'm only using MOCpages and Brickshelf right now to and I manage to find attention on there just fine)
I actually used it every day to look for new Space models. There are many "general" Lego fan websites, but none truly devoted to space (that I know of). This has left the Lego Space community scattered into sub-forums on general sites.
This is my opinion, of course. If anyone knows of *the* place to discuss Lego Space, let me know.
A bit off topic thanks for mentioning Friends in Space my daughter kept asking where we could buy those models. It's a goofy idea, like mixing Castle and Space for example ... oh wait
Had never heard of rebrick, will follow this one
I think that the "relaunchement" is on just now, look here: http://www.lego.com/en-us/rebrick/contest-page