Velog: a social networking site for cyclists

Screen shot of Velog.org.

Portland cyclist and web development guru Brian Ellin has created Velog, a social networking site for cyclists.

Ellin says the site is, “like a blend of Twitter.com and the Bike Commute Challenge website.”

The site is “city centric” to encourage users to find other cyclists with similar riding interests nearby. Once signed up, users can log rides, post updates, add friends, and create groups and communities.

Velog also allows users to compare ride hours, distances, etc… through cool looking charts. Here’s an example of five riders’ saddle time over one week:

Five cyclists comparing their hours in the saddle over the last week.

Another cool feature is that all riders and group velogs have RSS feeds, which allows for easy exporting. Each velog and group also comes with an embeddable “widget”, HTML code you can copy/paste to your own website to display your activity.

The site just launched earlier this month and so far there are 21 riders listed from Portland.

Sign up, log in, and start Velogging!

UPDATE: Brian Ellin wrote in to say he’s created a BikePortland.org group. Nine people have already signed up! Go check it out. I might integrate the group posts into my sidebar…