Every so often we chuck one of The Lego Car Blog Elves over The LEGO Group’s perimeter wall in an effort to bring you inside stories. We’ve lost a few Elves to the guard dogs this way, but as they’re pretty cheap we think it’s worth it.

Anyhow, this week one of the Elves made it back out with some official LEGO Group news and only minor bite marks. Props to him. And the news is pretty exciting…

The LEGO Group are in a position that most other businesses would kill for; they are prolific in social media. Unofficial Lego-sharing websites and blogs have been running since before even YouTube, and contribute very much to the success of the company. It’s also fair to say LEGO, like all other large corporations, have been glacially slow in responding to the new way in which consumers communicate. Worse than that even, they’ve often tried to shut down social media outlets that refer to the brand name or imagery. Fine in 2002, not in 2012.

But the above stance is changing, and changing fast. The LEGO Group have not only finally recognised the role social media sites play in the success of their brand, they are actively endorsing them (The Lego Car Blog included!). As such they have created their own official social media site called ‘ReBrick‘, which links to the unofficial sites that many of you visit every week.

This is a landmark moment for LEGO, and social media more generally. ReBrick is only in ‘Beta’ mode currently, but we believe it’s the beginning of a whole new era in the relationship between The LEGO Group and their consumers.

Below is the official ReBrick statement from TLG:

We’d like to congratulate LEGO on their pioneering project, and we’d like to encourage you to join ReBrick and get posting (preferably articles from The Lego Car Blog!). You’ll also find us in the ‘Culture’ section of their ‘Brick Links’ page, which we’re rather pleased about!