golfshake is a niche social networking site, targeted at golfers. In addition to the standard social features, golfshake adds many tools specific to the golf community.

Darren Ramowski originally submitted his site a couple months ago when it was golfscoretracker.co.uk. Since then he has done a complete overhaul and recently re-launched as golfshake.com. The new name and site are both big upgrades. As Darren explains in his blog, the main drive behind the switch was to promote the site to international (non-uk in the case) users. In addition the site has grown beyond a simple score tracking system to a full fledged community. The new name fits both these goals.

The original site was built seven years ago as a side project to help Darren’s golf game, as well as a way to refine his PHP/MySQL skills. The site has really taken off in the last 18 months as the user base has jumped from 1500 to over 16K. Darren attributes most of this growth to the additional community features which have encourages word of mouth advertising.

From Darren:

Within the last 2 years the site has seen some major updates to the code base and the introduction of lots of new features. Users can now get in touch with each other to arrange golf games, see how their golf compares with buddies, organize public events which other users can join and run golf societies online. It’s a bit of a cliche but it’s almost MySpace for golfers.

I’m a big fan of this sort of stat tracking/competition angle. It’s something that will keep users coming back and active on the site. The way Darren has incorporated the usual social networking features with features targeted directly at golfers is impressive. It is this integration of stat tracking and community that really set golfshake apart.

If you’re a golfer, golfshake is definitely worth checking out.

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