Virtual Cycling Club

Since 2001, over 90,000 cyclist's have joined Cycling Forums to discuss topics from general cycling to equipment, training, racing and travel or vacation destinations (especially in europe during the tour de france). We also feature an great deals in our online store, 100's of articles, classifieds and product reviews.

Do any of you have experience with a virtual cycling club?
The idea is to connect, create a network, community, for local cyclists to exchange route tips and actually have a self managed club for scheduled-planed rides and ad-hock (key feature!) rides.

The members, in addition to regular (human operated) cycling club members we are all familiar with, can be the many cyclists in my area that are not part on my or any club.

Any opinions, experience setting something like this up, how to market this, what tools used to develop this (an online ride schedule db with a forum capabilities similar to this once, subscription, push email, etc.)?

The main reason for the post is to solicit opinions and/or criticism.