Online Community-Building
SPINonline

SPINonline is Spin magazine's music and pop culture site on America Online (keyword: SPIN).

In December 1994, prior to founding The Tortoise, I designed, developed and launched SPINonline. Because original content was expensive to produce and AOL had such an advanced set of communications tools relative to what was then available on the web, we turned to the SPINonline community for the bulk of the site’s content and spirit. SPINonline quickly grew into the most popular destination site and active online community for teenagers on AOL. During the summer of '95, we produced the Lollapalooza Online Diaries, an interactive tour journal created by musicians and fans participating in that summer's tour. Later, we worked with Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth and Sander Hicks of Softskull Press to publish the Online Diaries as a book. Online editor Ron Richardson took over SPINonline in the Spring of ‘96 and has since redesigned it and built it into a really great site.