I happened upon this site today called active.com, which bills itself as a gathering spot for people with active lifestyles. I figured heck, there must be a lot of hikers around there. I was right, though there wasn’t much actual content for hikers.
The site’s main navigation rail lists these main categories — baseball, basketball, cycling, football, golf, outdoors, running, soccer, softball tennis, triathlon — so, presumably, it intends to serve folks who do this stuff. I got curious and searched on the site’s member profiles to see what folks are into. The count:
- Running: 1,726
- Triathlon: 739
- Cycling: 604
- Mountain biking: 335
- Hiking: 331
- Walking: 303
- Soccer: 217
- Baseball: 198
- Basketball:193
- Golf: 218
- Football: 177
- Tennis: 173
- Softball: 144
- Snowboarding: 140
- Climbing: 127
- Surfing: 83
- Skiing: 80
- Fishing: 29
- Snowshoeing: 22
- Backpacking: 3
- Hunting: 1
Main categories in bold. Turns out the site’s all about serving active people, but its prime categories leave out the fourth-, fifth- and sixth-most popular activities. Hmm.
The site says it’s in beta and who knows where it’ll end up; I just found it interesting that the site wants to serve all these people who play team sports, but the folks who actually sign up are heavily into individual activities (also intriguing to see soccer ahead of baseball, football and basketball).
Active has been around for a while, but has mainly focused on taking race reservations for race coordinators. You’re right that they are light on content and don’t really focus on outdoor activities for my taste.
I wonder why they don’t just let the site be what it’s become and stop pretending to dwell on a bunch of topics that haven’t panned out.