When the annual skateboard carnage known as the Tampa Am took place a few months back, the event drew even more coverage than usual thanks to an online skateboarding community called icelounge.com (yeah, cool name, but absolutely no association with the illustrious lifelounge.com)
Forty-three videos and 115 photos from the event flooded the site, but not thanks to over-zealous reporters - any spectator that had a mobile phone with the capability of shooting pictures and video was heartily encouraged to post media on spot.icelounge.com for everyone to view and rate, which turned the event’s coverage into a very hands-on experience for those on the ground.
Great publicity for the event, and rewardingly interactive for punters. Sounds like a win/ win yeah? But that’s not where icelounge’s usefulness ends. The online skateboard community is kinda set up like the massive success story that is My Space, whereby users join up, create a profile, invite “crew” to link to their profile and upload photos and videos to trick out their “lounge”. But unlike My Space, whose 54 million users run the gamut from bands trying to flog their wares to paedophiles trawling for underage chicks in Connecticut, icelounge draws it’s line as being a niche site specifically for skateboarders and their ilk –pros, ams, photographers, filmers and industry heads all chewing the fat about whatever it is they wanna chew fat about.
Co-founded by pro skater Salman Agah, the site boasts a healthy slab of well-known skate celebrity heads too. Guys like Ronnie Creager and Brian Sumner right through to downright legend Steve Caballero all have profiles, and other members can mix it up and ask questions on how to break big or how to nail certain tricks to famous crew without having to que up at a signing. So what do the pros get out of it? Dunno, perhaps a connection to hear out their fans, or perhaps the added publicity a bit of down-to-earth good-will generates. After all, just like My Space, icelounge has the capacity to reach people without doing any stretching at all –people looking to network will sniff you down, actively seeking anything of interest.
And what have they found with icelounge.com? Sure, like most sites it’s overrun with posers and pimply kids (ahem, lifeloungers excluded!), but it also happens to be a point towards the future of skate media. It’s a DIY site where users can send pictures and vids directly from their mobile to their profile in minutes, contributing images to shape the kind of event coverage they wanna see or simply showcase the skating prowess of their friends. And on a personal level? It’s a forum to meet like minded souls and connect with the skateboard community at large for free, yada yada. Sounds clichéd? Sure, but it also sounds like an idea that’s time has come.
View phone coverage of the Tampa Am at
spot.icelounge.com