10 Great Media Sites: Officer.com

By Sean Callahan

Cygnus Business Media's Officer.com is all about community, a very big community. The site attracts an average of 800,000 monthly unique visitors, according to Omniture.

“We organized the site to be like a virtual police department,” said Frank Borelli, Officer.com editor in chief (and a retired police officer).

There is the Property Room, where law enforcement products such as the Rhino .357 Magnum Revolver or Wiley X “Black Ops-Zak” sunglasses are featured. Officer.com's Forums are akin to the locker room at the station house, Borelli said, where police officers can discuss specific aspects of the job with their peers.

Officer.com also has areas devoted to specific law enforcement jobs, ranging from forensics to K-9 to counterterrorism. The site also offers training videos.

The Squad Room is designed to be a Facebook-like community. Users create a profile and can “friend” other officers. When a user comments anywhere on the site, the newly installed Disqus platform ensures those comments are added to the user's profile, said Eric Kammerzelt, Cygnus' VP-technology.

Other community-oriented features on Officer.com include the live streaming of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund's candlelight vigil in Washington, D.C., which honors officers killed in the line of duty.