Disc Golfers R Us

My typical modus operandi of thinking something to death and then taking swift action seems to have worked this time. Last summer, for my day job and also for the column on IT and higher education that I write, I decided to pay more attention to social networks like MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

I already had accounts on all three, and others, but didn't go there much. After looking at them all for a while, and getting more active on all three, I decided that I liked the tenor of Facebook the best. And, I found out that Facebook is very useful and rewarding. I can stay in touch with friends and acquaintances that I see only rarely, even as rarely as every 10 years or so.

I know that some people would say that someone you don't see for 10 years is not really a friend, but I see that differently. With Facebook, I have a stream of information about a lot of people I really like but simply don't get to see very often.

Way back before I served 2 1/2 terms on the Professional Disc Golf Association's board of directors, I ran a website that was called Disc Golfing dot Com. I used it to gather together what I could find out about disc golf on the Web, including news items, and publish it all in one place. It came to be the fourth most-visited disc golf website, after the PDGA, Disc Golf dot Com, and Brian Sullivan's DiscLife.

But when I went onto the PDGA board I killed the site. I had been, not making money, but getting some disc golf products in return for some site advertising and I felt, and still feel, that PDGA board members should not have any financial interest or even potential financial conflicts within disc golf.

So, after I left the board a year and a few months ago, I wasn't sure what to do, or when, but I knew that I would end up with another website.

About a week ago, on an email list I have managed since 2000 for aabout 3,000 college and university webmasters (The best email list on any topic anywhere on the Internet, by the way, search or UWEBD!), in response to one of the discussion threads, I posed the question: "Should we move to Google Groups or some other functionality?"

On one of the first posts, I learned of a way to fairly easily create a niche social network like Facebook or MySpace. I created one for uwebd (called CUWEBD) and saw it grow. As I learned more about the potential, I realized that I had found my new disc golf-related Web avocation.

So, late Wednesday afternoon, December XX, I created such a social network, which has come to be called Disc Golfers R Us. I played with it on Thursday and started telling people about it on Friday. As I write this, we are approaching 500 members, and they are loving the site up and making it very active. It's exciting.

At about 200 members I decided to offer a free basket to a randomly-drawn person from among the first 500 members, and I think we will award that tonight. After we do that, I am going to offer up a prize, done in the same random way, for those in the first 1,000 members. It will be a set of unthrown discs from several manufacturers. The image at left is what I will post on the Disc Golfers R Us website about it.