You may recall Bode Miller, the USA Olympic silver medalist skier and 2008 Alpine Skiing World Cup Champion, apparently he is doing more than just skiing these days as he has teamed with PathConnect to create SkiSpace, a social network for skiers and snowboarders. SkiSpace, not to be confused with MySpace, launched in December 2007 and offers a place for skiers and snowboards online.
SkiSpace offers a place for ski enthusiasts to connect via a basic profile as well as post their ski trip videos and photos. Users can research ski resorts and make their favorite ski resort your "basecamp" for the skiing season as each resort profile lists upcoming events, weather and ski conditions. SkiSpace users can also book travel and purchase ski gear.
You can see SkiSpace's growth since launch (below), it seems to have made an initial burst and trailed off a bit but it is still a young site and it will take time to grow the community.
To be totally frank, SkiSpace seems like a
ripoff of MySpace including the very similar name positioned to leverage Bode Miller's ski celebrity status to attract users. But ultimately the
community may find the site familiar, especially if they are MySpace
users and probably are interested in or are fans of Bode Miller so it might not be a bad approach. What would make SkiSpace more compelling to me would be the
creation of features to make SkiSpace less of a "walled garden" and more open. I would start by making SkiSpace videos embeddable and easy to share. Also some handy mobile features which help to keep connected to
the SkiSpace community while on the slopes would be an improvement over the typical social networking site.
