Surf Muskegon web portal promotes Great Lakes surfing

By: Deborah Johnson Wood

With over 40,000 visitors to its sister site, surfgrandhaven.org, last month, the developers of the new community web portal surfmuskegon.com hope to attract tourists, visitors, locals, and yes, surfers, to the Lake Michigan shore. The web site, created by Grand Haven-based Masana LLC, is a community driven portal touting the attributes of Michigan's West Coast to the world, and promoting events, weather, and the regional scene to locals.

“I moved back to West Michigan after living in Chicago and there were no portals here like they had there,” says Mitch Dennison, Masana founder, during an interview in March. “I wanted to build a regional portal with a longterm goal of competing with Yahoo and Google with a strictly regional focus.”

A main attraction is the 180-degree views of Pere Marquette beach provided live by Earthcam.com’s web cam. Surfers and other beach enthusiasts check wave heights and eyeball weather conditions before venturing out. Dennison hopes the views will attract freshwater surfers from around the globe and spur economic growth along the lakeshore.

Local meteorologist Will Beaton analyzes the weather data and interprets it for greater accuracy. Beaton also provides marine forecasts and forecasts for sportsmen. The web sites of the City of Muskegon, Muskegon Area First and the Muskegon Area Chamber of Commerce will soon receive live weather feeds from the site.

News, sports, community pages, photo galleries, a community forum and local ads keep user informed of the latest events. Dennison’s goal is to create an active online community. That’s already happening in Grand Haven where the surfgrandhaven.com launched in July 2007. Dennison plans to take the idea to all the communities along the West Michigan lakeshore.

Source: Masana, LLC

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