Posted on
01 June 2010, under
Fitness / Sport; More Fitness / Sport articles...
Jason Jacobs
An athlete has devised a system for people to track and measure their fitness levels via their mobile phones.
Since setting up his business FitnessKeeper in 2008, Bostonian Jason Jacobs has been steadily gaining market share in the mobile fitness-tech arena. FitnessKeeper is behind the RunKeeper platform, which enables people to track and measure their ongoing fitness activity using the built-in GPS in their iPhone. Via RunKeeper you can track your distance, pace, speed, elevation, calories burned and path travelled on a map, for instance.
Currently, 70pc of the RunKeeper platform user base is international. The fledgling business got a major publicity boost in 2009, when Time magazine voted its flagship iPhone App for runners as one of the Top 10 apps of that year.
"We were one of the first 200 applications on the Apps Store. We just launched on (Google) Android a month ago and we're now almost at 160,000 downloads in our first month," says Jacobs.
RunKeeper Free and RunKeeper Pro:
Right now, the RunKeeper platform has two applications on the iPhone: RunKeeper Free and RunKeeper Pro.
"The distinction is the free version is a complete basic experience. For the users who want advanced functionality, RunKeeperPro has features such as audio stats in your headphones so you don't have to look at the screen; training programmes that coach you through things such as a set pace you are trying to achieve. It will tell you whether you are ahead or below that pace. Or, if you are doing an interval workout - a mix between walking and running - we can coach you.
"So some of the coaching that you can only get from an in-person trainer is actually automated in your ears as you are doing the activity," explains Jacobs.
RunKeeper is also tapping into the social-networking domain, with its users having the capacity to autopost their activities to entities such as Facebook or Twitter.
"Now not only are people going to see my completed activity but they are going to be able to watch and cheer me on during that activity from their web browser," affirms Jacobs.
Appealing to your Average Runner:
What is so attractive about RunKeeper is it will appeal to the average runner out there. RunKeeper's core market is not the elite marathon runner, says Jacobs, but rather it reaches out to the casual fitness enthusiast - ie, the person who is training for their first 5K or the person who is training up for a 10K or half-marathon.
"We're trying to open up that functionality to the masses on a device that they already have with them while they are running," says Jacobs.
"It holds them accountable in a way that's much more powerful than if they just hit stop on their stopwatch and then that data doesn't go anywhere."
How FitnessKeeper Came About:
It was while he was training for his own first marathon in 2007 that runner Jacobs became frustrated with the tools he was using to track and manage his training.
"I started thinking about the kind of systems that should be built to solve my own personal issues.
"In May 2008, I quit my job to go find a team to build the system that addressed those needs. The Apps Store went live in July 2008 so just as we were getting ready to go build this system and community for runners, we saw what was happening with the iPhone and other smartphone platforms."
Initially, it was Jacobs and a couple of engineers who were working on the project part time and over weekends, but seven people are now working on the business full time from its office in Boston.
The FitnessKeeper team has also recently partnered with a French company called Withings that makes a Wi-Fi weighing scale.
"Every time you step onto this weighing scale it will wirelessly send your weight data to your RunKeeper profile, so you can keep your weight data and your running data in the one place, which becomes your personal fitness portal.
Tracking your Progress from A to Z:
About 60pc of the activities done for RunKeeper are for running and the rest is a mix of cycling, hiking, walking, skiing and kayaking, says Jacobs.
"It's anything in the outdoors that takes you from point A to point Z where you care about the path that you travel to get there.
"Why we're focusing so heavily on running initially is because running is a large market and also because there's so much more we can do to build one system so we really want to do it right for one sport first. Once we do, we can start tackling other sports one by one. When we go into the other sports we want to understand the specific needs of each individual sport and do it right," he affirms.
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