Keeping with this week’s theme of niche social networking sites comes COLOURlovers, a design inspiration and information site focused on color.
COLOURlovers is a resource that monitors color trends. COLOURlovers is aimed directly at people who use color and provides a place to compare color palettes, submit news and comments, and read color related articles and interviews.
The site was nominated for a Webby Award in the “Community Site” category in 2006 against Flickr, Yahoo! Answer, Delicious & Threadless.
After a re-launch in November, the site has seen rapid growth, building to half a million visitors a month with nearly 15,000 registered members.
COLOURlovers is headed by Darius A Monsef IV and is backed by a “small angel loan”.
Of the niche social networking sites I’ve reviewed this week, COLOURlovers would have to be the coolest so far. Those who don’t work in design won’t see the benefit of a site like this; those that do will lap it up. The next time I’m designing anything, I’ll be visiting COLOURlovers for a liberal dose of color inspiration.
