Freeskier, a popular independant skiing magazine, has recently “2.0ed” their website.

The site already featured articles written by Freeskier staff or personal entries by Pros. Registered users on their site can post their own videos and photos and have their own profiles. There is are two new section for reviews of all things related to skiing and daily podcasts. Freeskier’s website interface makes it easy to find popular and recently added videos and photos for visitors to look at. Member profiles are cited in the picture or video so it is easy to backtrack and find out more information about the author. There are four kind of memberships: Companies, Pros, Resorts, and Members. By giving members labels, Freeskier has effectively categorized its members into classifications. Pros (and Freeskier employees) are the most active member of the site. They create most of the content on the site. Resorts and Companies can get a lot of publicity by utilizing their membership profiles to promote their brand. Regular site members still have all of the same features as the Pros, Resorts, and Companies, but just not status advantage of the label.

The Freeskier website has some of the same characteristics as a blog and social network, but doesn’t neatly fit in under either of the two:

Tagging
User Profiles
Comments
Posting
Avatars
RSS feeds

Communication between members on their profiles; however, is somewhat limited. The interface for viewing posts lacks in functionality as well. Freeskier places high emphasis on the featured articles by their staff writers and high-profile members. The only way to view a complete list of member posts is on the Stories page. The Featured articles and posts take up about three-quarters of the page. Freeskier doesn’t all of the other posts in any system beyond tagging and chronological order on the Stories page.

And now some of the good stuff:

http://freeskier.com