Surf's up on new lakeshore web portals

By: Deborah Johnson Wood

By April 1, a new lakeshore information web portal will provide happy ‘real’ surfers as well as web surfers with a whole new opportunity to tap into regional weather, news, sports, marine conditions, and live happenings at Pere Marquette Park via web cam.

The portal, surfmuskegon.com, is patterned after its forerunner, surfgrandhaven.com, launched last year by Masana, LLC based on an idea local meteorologist Will Beaton pitched to Masana owner Mitch Dennison.

“Will wanted to develop a web site for surfers,” Dennison says. “We launched surfgrandhaven.com in July and now we’re up to 30,000 visitors a month and 680,000 hits.”

Historically, Grand Haven has been a favorite freshwater surfing locale, so the site began with daily weather and wave reports and a web cam that broadcasts activities at the Grand Haven Pier, the Grand Haven State Park, and the adjacent beach. The site attracted a global and local following.

WGHN provides news content and the site will soon have content provided by Grand Rapids-based Women’s Lifestyle Magazine, a business directory, health and living content, and entertainment news.

Surfmuskegon.com will contain content provided by local contributors, businesses, and media. Dennison hopes to launch a similar site in Holland later this year.

“We own the surf domains for every beach town from Mackinac Island to New Buffalo,” says Dennison. “We will not be developing these, because someone really needs to be part of those communities to make the sites successful, so we’re going to sell them to local franchisees who can pull together the local events and local content.”

Source: Mitch Dennison, Masana LLC

Deborah Johnson Wood is the development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].

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