photo via Leigh Fazzina’s tweetphoto account.

According to internal surveys, only 11% of singletracks members are on Twitter now – but perhaps that will change once you hear Leigh Fazzina’s story. Fazzina was competing in an off-road triathlon in Connecticut last week when she got lost and found herself far from the main trail. On a downhill section she hit some roots, crashed, and couldn’t get up on her own.

Good old fashioned yelling didn’t help – she was too far from the other racers for anyone to hear her. Fortunately she had her cell phone on her but voice calls didn’t go through. She was, however, able to connect to Twitter to send out an emergency tweet – “I’ve had a serious injury and NEED Help! Can someone please call Winding Trails in Farmington, CT tell them I’m stuck bike crash in woods.” (that’s 138 characters for those keeping count).

Within moments several of her 1,000+ Twitter followers, some as far away as California, sprang into action and contacted local authorities. Fazzina was eventually rescued, bringing a happy ending to her off road emergency. She even recorded a short video on her cell phone as she was wheeled away to the ambulance (watch here if you’re interested). What can’t cell phones do?

When I first read the headline I thought the story sounded a little fishy – why wouldn’t someone just use their cell phone to call 911 instead of Tweeting? However, according to a cell phone expert quoted in this USA Today article, it’s not unusual to be able to send a text message in areas where there is no voice coverage. It’s not clear whether Fazzina sent a text message to her Twitter account or whether she connected to Twitter via her phone’s internet connection. Either way, it’s good to know there’s more than one way to use a cell phone to get help in an MTB emergency! Start collecting Twitter followers now, you never know when you’ll need ‘em.

Specialized is going to hook up “a handful” of lucky riders this year with free access to 2010 Stumpjumper FSR bikes and sponsored MTB trips to hot trail locations. All you gotta do is prove you’re master of the Facebook or Twitter (or singletracks.com) and you just might get the gig.

Of course you don’t technically get to keep your Stumpjumper FSR – you just get to ride it for a year at which time you can decide to purchase it at a discount (what are they going to do with a used bike otherwise?). No specifics on how many people will be chosen for the crew or how many sponsored MTB trips will be offered but I suppose you can’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

The whole idea of giving bloggers / social network influencers mountain bikes to talk about online isn’t really a new one. In fact I ran my own (unsuccessful) campaign in 2007 to change my singletracks screen name in return for a new mountain bike. No one took me up on my offer which included hundreds of thousands of ad impressions, blog posts, and photos but I guess mountain bike companies hadn’t heard of the internet at that point

If you want to be considered for the program we’d love to help you out. Draft up a post about why you think you’re a good fit for the crew (more details about what Specialized is looking for) and we’ll see about posting your story on the #1 mountain bike blog or our forums. Then send Specialized a link to your post on singletracks.com – how’s that for targeted advertising!

Via bikehugger and cyclelicio.us.

Just in time for the “unofficial” start to the MTB season (don’t forget to set your clocks forward this weekend!) singletracks is rolling out new features and updates:

Vimeo Video Support

Singletracks now supports Vimeo trail videos! If you’re an online video connoisseur you know Vimeo videos are higher quality than most YouTube fare and now you can share your Vimeo trail videos on singletracks. Just find the trail where you video was shot, click the “Post trail video” link, and send us the Vimeo link. Thanks to ckdake for pushing for Vimeo support, watch this video of Yellow River to see the difference:

Yellow River – Creek Side from Jeremy Bower on Vimeo.

Twitter

Check out singletracks on Twitter! Admittedly we’re a little late to the party but at this point I think we’re still just “fashionably late,” no? Follow us to get the inside scoop on upcoming product reviews, find out where we’re riding, and read about features we’re working on for the site. Now we just need one of those iPhones so we can twitter from the trail

Gravatars

We’ve integrated Gravatars into the comments on photos and bike shop reviews (with even more integration coming soon). It’s simple (and free) to set up your avatar at gravatar.com and the cool thing is that your avatar will automatically follow you to other sites that support Gravatars (just be sure to sign up using the email address associated with your singletracks account).

Over time we’ll start to phase out the avatars currently being used on the site for a few of reasons. First, Gravatar.com provides some great tools for cropping and sizing avatars that we just can’t match. Second, Gravatars are portable meaning you don’t need to update 10 different websites when you get a new haircut and want to change your pic We also really like the simple look and feel of Gravatars. Finally, Gravatars load super fast unlike the avatars created under our current system.

Phew, thats it for now – time to get out and ride in this amazing weather…