Yo! Boom Boom! AOL’s produced a book* new ‘Action Sports On Demand’ website designed for skateboarders, snowboarders and other action sports athletes.
Their new ‘extreme’ lat34.com site is being billed as a “MySpace for 12-34 year-old male BMX riders and snowboarders,” letting sporty types send in their own videos for sharing.
According to AOL, visitors to the site will also be able to look up action sports events, equipment and athletes, while skateboarders and snowboarders can swap tips and look up local info using AOL’s instant messaging and blogging tools.
Wicked!
Named after the company’s Los Angeles location, the venture is a joint operation between AOL and video production company Fusion Entertainment.
Taking a sniff around the suitably “yoot” style website, we clicked on the ‘About Us’ section, only to be greeted with one of those really annoying, pretentious dictionary-style definitions:
“Main Entry: lat·i·tude
Function: noun
Pronunciation: ‘la-t&-“tüd, -“tyüd
1 angular distance from some specified circle or plane of reference
2 : freedom of action or choice”
Yeah, whatever, AOL.
Spots! Yeah! Rad!
Back to the site – which is still in beta – there are currently three extreme sports options on offer: Skate, BMX and FMX (which seems to involve motorcyclists flying through the air upside down).
Billed as ‘coming soon’ are new sections entitled, ‘Spots,’ ‘Gear,’ Water,’ ‘Snow,’ and ‘More’ (we’ve no idea what Spots means, but we’re sure the kids will be waaaay down with it. Whatever it is.)
In an interview with Reuters, Lat34.com CEO Jeff Howe bigged up the MySpace-esque values of his new website: “Our whole focus is blending traditional media values with … social networks, instant messaging, blogs and wireless.”
The full site is expected to roll out “later in the summer.”
(*‘book’ is used to mean ‘good’ amongst the hip kids after they realised that the predictive text of some phones spelt out ‘book’ instead of ‘cool.’)