Disclaimer: This is a paid posting, powered by trigami.

Everyone knows Web 2.0. Networking, Communities, so-called Social Networks. Now Sportsfreunde.de comes with a new idea: Sports 2.0! On this online community, sport fans from all Germany can register, get to know each other and meet. Need a jogging partner? You will find him on Sportsfreunde.de!

At first glance the website appears quite colourful. Multi-coloured boxes on the starting page lead on to different categories. The menu is placed below the header as a horizontal navigation, which is empirically not detected as a menu by unexperienced internet users. Like it should be on Web 2.0, there is a tag cloud with various forms of sport in the footer.

Ih the Community box you can see user pictures, probably at random. The box Videos contains a video preview. We have a map excerpt in the Events box and a small post code searchform for searching the next sport events nearby. Those three categories, Community, Videos and Events, seem to be the main topics of the page. Then there is also the box “Wer wir sind” (Who we are), assumedly you can read there what Sportsfreunde.de is about and who made it.

Okay then, let’s register. To find the link is quite easy as there is an orange star in the header, the inscription is “Jetzt neu anmelden” (Register now). Mandatory fields are: Nickname, password, email, first and last name, gender, birthday, post code, location and country.

A bit ambiguous: Post code and location are in the same line and delineated like that: PLZ / Wohnort* (Post code / location). At first I didn’t fill in the post code field, because there is no asterisk behind it. Even so the post code is also a mandatory field. A few seconds later I got the activation email and I can log in.

A second view on the menu above reveals another two main topics: Sportspartner and Clubs. A bit confusing, after all there are no boxes for those topics on the starting page, although they are more important than videos in my opinion. That’s a small bad point.

The design for the different menu items is blog similar: Sidebar on the right, content on the left. According to the menu item there are different sidebar contents, so that you only see currently relevant links and items in the sidebar. That forwards clarity: No needless contents.

The items Events and Sportspartner are similarly constructed: There is a calendar in the sidebar, besides a field for entering a event or request for a sport partner. In between there is a randomly chosen BMI, pulse or calories calculator, due to the link structure located in the community. But when I search for a complete list of all calculators there – may be that there are other calculators – I don’t make a find. That’s a real pity. Inside the content area of the items Events and Sportspartner there is a searchform, below a list of events resp. sport partners. If you start a search, you get the findings here.

The item “Bilder und Videos” (Pictures and Videos) certainly contains pictures and videos. You can filter them by form of sport in the sidebar and you can upload your own videos or photos. All in all quite unspectacular, ordinary people doing sports, and of course even a few pros.

Below the point “Vereine” (Clubs) you can enter your sports club. If somebody is looking for a football club in these parts and the club is registered, he can inform here right off about the club’s address. The telephone number would also be useful; that way one could make contact by phone.

Finally we have the item Community, where you can find other members, swap ideas on the board and found or join interest groups. Top right inside the header there is a mailbox, here you can receive messages from other members or send messages. Below the point “Mein Profil” (My profile) which opens when clicking on Community inside the horizontal menu, you’ve got an overview of all activities you made in the Community.

Then we got the item “Sportarten” (Sport forms). Here you can choose a sport form from a dropdown menu you want to know more about and then get an insight in history and rules of it. Want to boast with the offside rule on your next pub visit? No problem!

The possibilities on the page are very interesting by all means. The sport partner search, the club search and the events are offering enough options to live out your sportsmanship at all times, be it active or only as spectator. You’ll make a find here if you like to watch indoor football tournaments, as well if you are a broker and like to go jogging early in the morning, but don’t want to do that alone.

There are communities for so many things, so why not for sport fans? I like that concept and think it could absolutely be a success. Especially the richness of different possibilities makes it that interesting. I even like the sport forms areas, here you can inform yourself in detail and then show off with your knowledge.

The design I partly like less. The view inside the menu items is quite clear, but on the starting page the horizontal navigation doesn’t point out enough. I also miss the boxes for clubs and sport partners, which are quite important in my opinion, as I said before. Furthermore the whole page is much too colourful. A bit less of colours would benefit a lot.

In terms of the design further on I don’t like the left-aligned justification of the whole content. If you have a high resolution, there is a big empty white area left over on the right side. If the whole content was centered, the white area would split on both sides. That would look much more balanced.

The two big ad banners are also placed a bit unfortunately. I think one would even be enough, especially because both advertise the same page. The content appeals a bit wedged by the banners. If the top banner wouldn’t be there, the header would also show to advantage much better.

My result: Sportsfreunde.de is a quite good concept with an improvable design. With a bit work on the layout and some more clarity it could absolutely grow to a popular portal for sportsmen and even has family potential – if the son wants to be a football pro when he’s older, you can find an applicative club here. I’m curious how the page shapes up.