AllThingsD » Nike

What Did You Expect the Austrian Founder of a Fitness App Startup to Be Like?

Liz Gannes — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 23:05:09 +0000

Florian Gschwandtner is the CEO of Runtastic, an Austrian fitness app maker. He has an accent like Ahhnold, impossibly high cheekbones, and when he demos his Runtastic account I should point out that he runs long distances of sub-seven-minute miles and has a single-digit body fat percentage.

To show off a pushup tracking app, for example, which counts reps using the proximity sensor on the iPhone, Gschwandtner drops to the floor in the kitchen area of my office. Then he switches to the squats app, which uses the accelerometer to count. (Perfect form, of course.) Then he switches to the heart rate app, which uses the camera sensor. (Okay, well, everybody has a heart rate.)

There’s no question there are now a lot of fitness apps — Nike+, RunKeeper, Endomondo, Noom — but I haven’t seen a demo quite like this before.

I generally try not to objectify the people I write about, but Gschwandtner invites it. He calls himself a “fitness fanatic” and said he spends three to five days per week in the gym in addition to three to four runs per week — usually while carrying four phones to test new apps. Since he’s in San Francisco for meetings this week, Gschwandtner will run the half-marathon here this weekend. He’ll also be featured in the August edition of “Men’s Health” in Germany.

Runtastic was founded by Gschwandtner and three of his college buddies three years ago in Austria. Its 15 apps have been downloaded 30 million times, and 10 million users have created accounts (they’re not required). Each app is translated into seven languages.

The company also makes its own hardware, including heart rate monitors and GPS watches, and just started selling them on Amazon.

Venture funding is “nearly impossible” to come by at home, Gschwandtner said, so Runtastic bootstrapped itself without outside money. It has been cash-flow positive since 2011, selling $4.99 pro versions of each of the apps, subscriptions and the hardware. The company currently has 65 employees.

The advantage of the Runtastic system, Gschwandtner argued, is that it works end to end. You can essentially live your digitized fitness life within the Runtastic world of smartphone apps and hardware. That seems to me like a strangely alienating perspective in this day when people have so many other fitness tech options available to them. But Gschwandtner said Runtastic does integrate with a few outside devices and services like FitBit, Withings and MyFitnessPal.

Though Gschwandtner is an intense Runtastic user, he noted there are even better examples. For instance, there’s Gerhard Gulewicz, an endurance road biker who has competed in the 3,000-mile Race Across America seven years in a row, finishing in second or third place four times.

This year, Gulewicz — who happens to also be Austrian — is broadcasting his eighth attempt to win the race via Runtastic. Race Across America just started yesterday, so you can actually track him live here, and click on a little icon to send him cheers, which are amplified live through a megaphone in the Gulewicz team car so he can hear them on his bike.

So far, Gulewicz has made it all the way to Arizona, with an average pace of 17.5 miles per hour over 23 hours. According to the app, he has burned nearly 19,000 calories. And he has received 1,300 virtual cheers.

Myspace Hires Two VPs to Prep for Relaunch

Mike Isaac — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 19:03:01 +0000

Myspace, the struggling website that fueled the first major wave of the social Internet, announced Monday that it had hired two new vice presidents to prepare the company for its major relaunch this year. New VP of global marketing Christian Parkes comes most recently from Levi’s, and held a similar previous position at Nike. Joseph Patel will be Myspace’s VP of content and creative, and was most recently a senior producer at Vice Magazine.

Ex-Zynga Manager Lo Toney Appointed CEO of Khosla's LearnStreet

Tricia Duryee — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 16:00:31 +0000

Laurence “Lo” Toney has been named CEO of LearnStreet, the Palo Alto-based startup that’s helping aspiring computer scientists learn how to code online.

Toney is one of the many Zynga employees who have left the games company over the past few months. In October, he stepped down after working there for three years, most of that time as the general manager of Zynga Poker.

“It’s hard to imagine being at a big company now, like Zynga, now that I’m at a small company,” said Toney, after only five weeks on the job. “But that’s why I chose to leave. I wanted to join a company I could lead, and take it to the next level.”

LearnStreet was founded a little over a year ago by Vinod Khosla, a venture capitalist who saw an opportunity to create an easy way to create online courses. Other education companies have also sprouted up around it, including Codecademy, Khan Academy and Coursera.

LearnStreet claims to teach someone the basics of three programing languages (JavaScript, Python and Ruby) with no development background needed.

Toney said it reminds him of his college years, when he bought himself an HTML programming book and taught himself how to make websites (despite the fact that he was studying business). LearnStreet is the online version of buying a book, and can be used by a student studying computer science, or by a teenager or adult looking for job skills.

While Toney’s most recent experience is based in gaming, he said there’s a number of overlaps between Zynga and the new company.

First, running the Poker division is like “having your own startup,” he said. As the general manager, he was in charge of managing an entire team and budget. The other similarity is that he plans on LearnStreet having a freemium business model, where customers get some of the course work for free and then pay for additional help — sort of like free-to-play games.

“What we’ve done and discovered is we are beginning to pick up on pain points and friction points, where people are willing to pull out their credit card and pay for additional help,” Toney said.

So far, the company has raised $1 million from Khosla Ventures; now, with Toney on board, he said it plans to raise additional funding soon.

Prior to Zynga, Toney held positions at Nike and eBay. At Nike, he was the Global General Manager for Nike.com, working on the company’s e-commerce strategy; at eBay, he was director and general manager of the company’s collectibles business.

How Nike Revives a Fallen Sports Star

Peter Kafka — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 20:45:15 +0000

Lance Armstrong said that the day that his doping caught up to him was a “a $75 million day,” because he lost the support of lucrative sponsors like Nike. But Nike never bailed on Tiger Woods, and now the golfer figures prominently in a new campaign.

This ad came out earlier this week and became an immediate YouTube hit. Right now, it’s closing in on seven million views:

Can Armstrong ever get his sponsors back? Nike CEO Phil Knight won’t rule it out, but that’s a lot different than saying he’ll bring him back.

As the WSJ points out, there’s a substantial difference between Woods’s off-the-course cheating and Armstrong’s cheating, so it’s hard to see the sports giant ever coming back again. Especially when Nike based entire ad campaigns on Armstrong’s innocence.

Apple Can't Afford Buyer's Remorse With Next Retail Hire

John Paczkowski — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 11:55:25 +0000

John Browett, the Dixons exec tapped to oversee Apple’s retail operations last January, was Tim Cook’s first big hire after taking up the CEO reins at the company. Nine months later, he would be among Cook’s first big fires, ousted from Apple after a series of missteps that drew some rare negative publicity to the company’s wildly successful retail empire.

Now Apple is once again on the hunt for an executive to oversee its retail stores, a keystone of the company’s success. And it can ill afford to make another such hiring mistake.

In the fourth quarter, Apple’s 401 stores worldwide generated an average revenue per store of $11.2 million, and a recent study found that Apple’s retail stores earn $6,050 per square foot, compared to Tiffany & Co., which earned $3,017 a square foot.

So who might Apple look to to fill the shoes of Ron Johnson, the chief architect of its retail strategy, who left the company last year to take the CEO job at retailer J.C. Penney? That’s a conundrum difficult enough to perplex the most skilled of recruiters; recall that it took Apple about seven months to sign Browett, and that was with the help of executive search firm Egon Zehnder International.

An easier task is to determine where Apple might look for candidates with the sort of experience needed to drive its retail ops.

“Apple’s next frontier is to really grow the brand internationally,” Neil Stern, a senior partner at retail consultancy McMillan Doolittle LLP, told AllThingsD. “So brands like Nike, Coach, Burberry and Starbucks spring to mind as being ‘models,’ perhaps, of where an individual might have that experience.”

We’ve been asking around for weeks about possible external candidates for Apple’s senior VP of retail job, and have heard largely the same thing, and a few names to boot*. They are, in no particular order:

Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts
Victor Luis, president, International Group, Coach
Jeanne Jackson, president, Direct to Consumer, Nike
John Culver, president, Starbucks Coffee China and Asia Pacific
Paul Gainer, executive vice president, Global Disney Store

All five are well qualified. They’re working for global brands with a strong consumer focus and broad international presence. Ahrendts has spent years stewarding one of the world’s most iconic global brands. Luis has spent years steering Coach’s international operations and, crucially, served as CEO of Coach China. At Nike, Jackson is working for a company with a culture similar to Apple’s, one on whose board CEO Tim Cook serves; she also used to run Banana Republic and Walmart.com. Culver has played a key role in growing Starbucks’ global footprint in markets that are of keen interest to Apple, and has done a good job of translating the company’s culture internationally, which isn’t an easy job. Gainer has been overseeing the Disney Store since 2008, when the company reacquired it, and now directs a global retail chain that’s in many ways reminiscent of Apple’s. His boss, Disney CEO Bob Iger, sits on Apple’s board.

Good candidates, all. But would any be interested in making the jump to Apple?

Industry sources are divided on that issue. Some say the job is so high-profile that it will inevitably generate strong interest and appeal to the caliber of candidates like those above.

Others feel that the transition that a move to Apple would require of these candidates would be off-putting. “Any one of these people would be terrific for that job,” one source with close ties to Apple said. “But none of them would ever take it. They’re retail people, and Apple is not a true retailer. It’s a consumer-products company.”

Most retail CEOs come out of a merchandising background, setting a vision for the brand and selecting the product lines it will sell; creating the consumer experience and building out the merchandising, marketing, financial and operational columns that support those things is their passion. But running Apple’s retail operations these days doesn’t involve much of that. Instead, it’s about continuing to execute well on someone else’s good idea. It’s about selling the devices you’re told to sell, and selling them effectively in more markets. The real exciting stuff, the big innovation, has already happened. Apple doesn’t need a hotshot, retail problem-solver. And that may temper the job’s appeal.

As one source familiar with Apple’s retail operations said, “I’m not sure people of the caliber Apple is probably looking for would see an opportunity to add much value to the company’s retail operations — certainly not as much as they might find elsewhere.”

So, then, where does Apple turn? Does it look for retail leadership internally?

That’s certainly a possibility. And there are at least three candidates: Steve Cano, Apple’s manager of retail stores; Bob Bridger, Apple VP for retail real estate and development; and Jerry McDougal, VP of retail.

Of the three, McDougal seems the most likely, simply because he holds the VP of retail title already. But sources say that Cano would be a good pick, as well. His name has been bandied about before in relation to this job, and, according to insiders and outsiders both, he’s well-suited for it. As once source said, “Frankly, I was surprised he wasn’t tapped last time around.”

“I think Steve’s probably the best internal candidate,” Needham analyst Charlie Wolf said. “He’s the most well-rounded of those three.”

And that would seem to be the case. Cano started out as the manager of Apple’s first Soho store. Then he transferred to the company’s Ginza store in Japan to manage its opening and early days. Subsequently, he transferred to London to run international retail operations. And now he’s head of all Apple Stores.

In other words, he’s got broad in-the-field experience and, crucially, he gets Apple Store culture. Browett didn’t, and that’s among the reasons behind his ouster.

“[With Browett], clearly, there was not a cultural fit,” Stern said. “Any new head needs to fit into the Apple (and Apple Store) culture.”

And to have a strong vision for how to expand the Apple Store experience internationally, while maintaining one of its hallmarks: Good service. Sure, Apple sells a lot of hardware through its stores, but it also caters to multitudes of customers who visit seeking help at its Genius Bars. And that’s a keystone of its retail success. As one retailer said, “People underestimate just how powerful the Genius Bar is. You walk into an Apple Store with a broken iPhone, expecting a fight with some customer service rep that doesn’t know what they’re doing. But, instead, you get a Genius who diagnoses your problem on the spot. Maybe he even replaces your iPhone. Now how do you feel about Apple as you walk out of that store?”

The point: Whoever Apple taps for this job must do a good job of keeping customers happy as the business grows and work hard to ensure that, more often than not, folks who walk into an Apple Store for help walk out customers for life.

Put all those requirements together and the task of finding a candidate with the skill set to meet them becomes a tall order, indeed. Taller still, given the embarrassment of being forced to sack Browett after less than a year on the job. Apple’s next hire for this job has to be a good one. The repercussions are far too great if it’s not.

And, as Ron Johnson notes, the stakes are too high to rush a decision.

“I think Tim will take his time with this,” Johnson told AllThingsD. “The internal team is very strong and capable of running well until he finds the right person.”

Apple declined comment on its search for a new SVP of retail, noting — as it did in the press release announcing Browett’s departure — that its retail team continues to report directly to Tim Cook.

*The reply most often offered in response to this question: Ron Johnson.

With reporting by Tricia Duryee.

A Health Monitor That Gets You Up and Moving

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 23:26:41 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Here come the holidays—and with them the extra pounds from family feasts, eggnog and gingerbread. Rather than wait to make a New Year’s resolution to get in shape, one technology product might get people off the couch and moving now. It’s appropriately named Up.

This health-monitoring band is one tech product I’ve put off testing because I didn’t think I had enough time to use it. Nor was I thrilled about wearing a band on my wrist round-the-clock for a week straight. But I realized loads of people who are too busy to track their movement, sleep and nutrition habits could benefit from this gadget. The reason? It works even if you do little more than wear it.

The first version of Up, by Jawbone, was released over a year ago but had hardware problems, causing the company to pause production and issue full refunds to many users. Competitors abound, including the $149 Nike+ FuelBand, $100 Fitbit One and $150 Larklife.

The $130 Up by Jawbone, shown intact (left) and stripped to its innards (right), tracks movement and sleep.

The Up band, which costs $130 and can be bought online or in stores like Apple, Best Buy and AT&T, corresponds with a free iOS app. (An Android app is in the works.) There is no Up browser software. The Up band offloads its data when plugged into the headphone jack of an iOS device, and I found that using this physical connection and watching the data load was a fun, quick experience. Using a physical plug for syncing, rather than a power-draining Bluetooth wireless connection, also means the band’s battery can last for 10 days.

Jawbone suggests syncing the Up twice a day, but I plugged mine in more often, excited to see how many steps I took in a workout or how well I slept.

During setup of the Up app, users enter their gender, weight, height and birthday so the device can more accurately estimate how many calories you’ve burned throughout a day. The Up band has built-in sensors that track your movements, whether you’re walking, running, sitting idle or sleeping—including when you fall asleep, when you wake and whether you’re in light or deep sleep. It also vibrates, a feature that can be used as an “Idle Alert” to notify you if you’ve sat still for a certain length of time, say 15 minutes, or as a silent alarm. It even knows to wake someone during light, not deep sleep, because that person will wake feeling more refreshed. The app will wake you up to 30 minutes ahead of your set time to catch you at the optimal sleep stage.

I had planned to test the Up as a more passive user, letting it track my steps and sleep habits without me doing very much, but I was quickly hooked on adding data manually. This included adding workouts that weren’t tracked, such as my 15-minute abdominal workout, and entering information about what I ate and drank.

Plugging the band into an iPhone’s headphone jack syncs data with the Up app. Details of a night’s rest include the amount of time spent in light- and deep-sleep stages.

Charts in the app show users’ movements each day and over time.

I found food entry to be a weak spot in the Up. Specific foods weren’t always easy to find in the app, or I cooked the food myself, making it a challenge to enter all of its ingredients. I wound up entering broad categories of food, like “whole wheat spaghetti,” rather than entering all of the accompanying veggies, meaning I didn’t get an accurate overall picture of my diet. And the Up app could do a better job of identifying what each color means in the charts that measure your movement and sleep; as of now, you have to guess that red indicates intense movement and yellow means less intense movement. I also wasn’t gung-ho about the app’s mood indicator, which displays a smiley face that you can change to reflect your current mood.

The Up band isn’t a heart monitor, nor does it have a display for seeing things like the current time (if you wanted to use it as a watch) or the number of steps taken.

Wearing the Up band can cramp your style, kind of like wearing sneakers with a business suit. Its sporty, rubber exterior goes with some clothing, but not most of my outfits. It was comfortable enough on my wrist that I barely noticed the way it felt after just a day, even while I was sleeping—though it was a little odd to keep on in the shower. I tested the Up in onyx color; it’s also available in light blue and mint green with five more colors coming early next year.

If you need a digital kick in the pants that makes you more conscious of your body, Up will give it to you. I found myself walking to the farthest bathroom in my office to log more steps, drinking water instead of soda because I knew I’d add it to my food log later, and standing up to walk around nearly every time my Up’s Idle Alert went off.

At first, the Up’s iOS app can be a bit overwhelming because it’s loaded with features. The app sets goals for you according to World Health Organization guidelines, like eight hours of sleep a night and 10,000 steps a day, and shows the average met by most Up users. You can change these settings, but I kept mine at the WHO average. I felt a boost of pride when I met and surpassed daily goals.

Before going to sleep each night, I pressed and held a button on the Up that illuminated a tiny moon on the band, indicating I was going to sleep. In the morning, I pressed the button again and saw a snowflake, indicating that I was awake. This manual press on the Up helps the app to know when you first lie down in bed, so it can measure how long it takes for you to fall asleep. I used the Up’s silent alarm and it woke me 10 minutes before the time I set because I was in light sleep.

I was glad to learn that my brisk 15-minute walk to and from the subway each morning is over 4,000 steps. And after working at a Christmas bazaar, I synced my Up with my iPhone and found out that I walked 11,100 steps—passing my daily step goal in the time of the bazaar. When I woke up twice in the middle of one night, my Up band recorded this and gave me a cheeky tip about sleep the next day. The tip was titled, “Was It Good For You?” I created a “Team” with two other users, allowing us to share whichever stats we chose. We commented on each other’s progress, and it gave me a feeling of camaraderie.

Up gives people the flexibility to engage with it as much or as little as they want. If you’d rather not take the time to sync, the band can store up to nine months of data between syncs. Although the Up band isn’t always fashionable, it will make people more conscious of what their bodies are doing each day.

Write to Katherine Boehret at katie.boehret@wsj.com

Demand Media Finally Breaks Away for Good From Lance Armstrong

Kara Swisher — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 15:00:13 +0000

In the midst of last week’s earnings call, after the company had released strong results, Demand Media CEO and co-founder Richard Rosenblatt made an unusual declaration about its once-tight affiliation with now-disgraced professional racing cyclist Lance Armstrong.

Said Rosenblatt about the Santa Monica, Calif., social content company to Wall Street analysts about the status of the relationship in the wake of Armstrong being stripped of his many Tour de France titles:

“Our relationship is with the Livestrong Foundation, not with Lance, and we are aligned in empowering people to live healthier lives, and we support the important work of the foundation. We have built a powerful destination, popular applications and a very engaged community. None of this has changed and we have seen no material impact on the consumer traffic or metrics.”

In reality, the once-close relationship between Demand and Armstrong ended a while ago, even though the athlete’s cancer-fighting charity has been a high-profile shareholder since early 2008. At the time, Demand struck a four-year exclusive deal with Livestrong to create a health and wellness site, and also got a perpetual license to the Livestrong.com domain name.

But Armstrong — despite appearing at the Web 2.0 conference in 2008 with Rosenblatt — eventually had little to do with the Demand brand.

And it is down to zero involvement now, after he recently stepped down as chairman of Livestrong, due to the doping controversy. That mess has caused a lot of the brands he was tied up with, such as Nike, to disassociate themselves from Armstrong himself, although not from the Livestrong Foundation.

That has also been Demand’s direction, especially given that the commercial Web site, which has become the No. 3 health property in the U.S., is one of the company’s strongest ones. That adds up to about 26 million monthly unique visitors, a gain of 97 percent since last year.

But with that success, why did Demand make the statement at earnings — as well as putting up a blog post recently clarifying that it had “no direct relationship” with Armstrong?

Apparently, according to several sources, Demand had to move to be as explicit has possible, not because of consumers, but because of advertisers.

“The advertisers did care about the affiliation,” said one source. “So it was time to say in no uncertain terms to them and shareholders that Lance Armstrong has nothing to do with Demand.”

Or, as the blog post in late October noted rather strongly:

“We don’t believe the struggles of one individual should detract from the millions of real people who have benefited from work that’s been done to prevent cancer and improve the lives of those unfortunate enough to have it.”

Or, as they say in bike racing, Armstrong had simply become too much of a wheel sucker.

Facebook's Newest Advertiser: Facebook

Peter Kafka — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 11:43:54 +0000

The Facebook press blitz continues: After Sheryl Sandberg and her team took the first half of the week at the Advertising Week convention in New York, they’ve handed off to Mark Zuckerberg, who is on both NBC and the cover of Businessweek this morning.*

And if you miss any of that, here’s another chance to get some Facebook messaging, via a 90-second ad the company has commissioned. It’s made by Wieden & Kennedy, the shop best known as Nike’s ad geniuses, and is directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, who made the excellent “Amores Perros.”

Facebook reps say that, for now, you’ll only see the ad on Facebook.com. But they leave open the notion that you’ll see it on Web sites not owned by Facebook at some point, and that it may also end up on TV.

Which would make sense: Why spend a bunch of money on a nice ad like this if you’re not going to show it to people who aren’t already using your product?

Then again, as Facebook announced this morning, it has a billion active users. So, if you’re not using Facebook now, that must mean you really don’t want to use Facebook — not that you’re not familiar with it.

* Actually, Zuckerberg himself isn’t on the cover of Bloomberg Businessweek; his company is. But Zuck is well represented on the pages inside. Here’s the cover (click image to enlarge):

Alpha Brings Heart-Rate Tracking to Non-Clunky Wristwatch

Lauren Goode — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 16:35:58 +0000

Most heart-rate monitors — the ones that actually work — involve chest straps and clunky armbands or wristwatches to get the job done.

Liz Dickinson thinks heart rate can be accurately measured with a sleeker, strap-free device.

Dickinson, the creator of the MIO watch, has partnered with Philips Electronics to create a new watch called the Alpha. It’s a continuous-heart-rate monitor that can be worn on the wrist, doesn’t involve a chest strap and, in testing, has measured an accurate EKG at performance speeds of up to 12 miles per hour.

“The goal with this tech was to eliminate the muscle noise,” Dickinson said in an interview. “The wrist moves so much and there’s so much ambient noise that in the past it’s been hard to get just the heart rate.” She said that paying a visit to the Philips company in the Netherlands two years ago convinced her this device could be done.

The Alpha has a simple white-framed face and comes with a breathable black strap. It tells time, has a timer, gives both visual and audio alerts when the wearer moves in and out of heart-rate zones, and offers a “last run” stats review.

What the watch doesn’t offer is built-in GPS or an accelerometer, so it can’t measure speed, distance or pace. It is, however, compatible with both iOS and Android smartphones to work with certain fitness apps, like RunKeeper. (It currently doesn’t work with Nike+, though Dickinson has said she’d be happy to chat with Nike if they called.)

On June 25, Dickinson launched a Kickstarter campaign for the watch. The Alpha raised more than $113,000 in about a week, surpassing its $100,000 Kickstarter goal. The device is set to ship in November, and will cost $250.

While wearable fitness gadgets that measure activity (but not heart rate) have recently become all the rage, some proponents of fitness tech still believe in the metric of thump-thump-thump to measure exertion levels. The Alpha is clearly marketed at people who compete or take their fitness seriously.

“It’s a huge market for wellness, and people are just dying to buy products that will get them healthy,” Dickinson says. “Most people don’t need to know their heart rate — that’s true. But for athletes, it’s still critical.”

Alpha’s biggest competition might come from the Basis band, which was shown off at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (but has yet to hit the market). The Basis B1 is a cool-looking wristband that uses skin sensors to monitor heart rate, and is priced at $199.

Path and Nike FuelBand Pair Up, Flaunting the Benefits of a Private API

Mike Isaac — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 13:00:03 +0000

Facebook and Twitter rose to prominence in part because they played so nicely with others. Yes, the sites were great products first. But they became even better platforms, opening their application programming interfaces to let third-party developers integrate their services. And as the platform era matured, open APIs practically became en vogue.

But there is still value in being exclusive.

Path, for instance, is perhaps a prime example of this. It has an API, though it currently only has a single announced partner: Nike. On Friday, the company announced a small update in the partnership, adding integration between Nike’s FuelBand fitness tracking bracelet and the private social network. Path publishes a summary of your FuelBand activity in the form of an interactive graph at the end of each day, complete with included data points on where and when you’ve checked in using Path.

Ultimately, the aim is a mix of motivation and geeking out on data — you can see how close you’ve come to your daily exercise goal, while simultaneously tracking all the places, activities and reasons why you achieved it (or why you didn’t). It’s incremental, building on the previously announced partnership between the two companies when Path first started publishing Nike+ running route updates.

However small an update, it’s also an indicator of Path’s API partnership strategy as a whole. When Path first spoke of its API, the plan wasn’t to open it up to the masses — it was, and remains, a private API, with partners selected in terms of which ones make sense for the company to work with, and which ones make for a better user experience.

“We want to improve the experience for the collective users of both apps,” Path CEO Dave Morin told me in an interview on Thursday, “which is why we’re selective about who we’re partnering with.”

That selectivity means more time is spent on the integration, making the content in a user’s stream actually more attractive. The new FuelBand graphs are sleek, offering users granular information about their fitness activity in a polished interactive graphic. That’s more than can be said for some apps that show up in Facebook’s News Feed, even after Open Graph integration.

“We’re driven by quality,” Morin said. “We’re driven by design.”

And ultimately, the better and prettier the content is that shows up in the stream, the more users will actually want to engage with the product on a regular basis. Quality begets stickiness, and stickiness begets a company with a better chance at surviving.

We’ll no doubt see more companies partnering with Path in the future. My hunch says it’ll be a slow, steady ramp up over time, with Path being selective about who it wants to work with.

Ignition's John Connors on Nike's FuelBand, Enterprise Software and Investing (Video)

Tricia Duryee — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 17:00:56 +0000

John Connors was Microsoft’s chief finance guy for five years, responsible for managing one of the largest tech company’s books.

For the past seven years, however, he’s been contributing his fiscal know-how and diversity of opinions to the venture business, joining Bellevue’s Ignition Partners in 2005.

As a member of Nike’s board, the FuelBand wearer explains how the Internet is disrupting the retail business. Strong distribution channels — think Amazon — are enabling new consumer brands to be created overnight with nothing but a hotshot clothing designer and access to cheap manufacturing. But, he says, services like the FuelBand have the opportunity to keep brands relevant to consumers on a daily basis.

He also points to “the next big cycle in the enterprise.”

Over the past few years, he says, not many interesting enterprise companies were created, but “in the past 24 months there’s been more interesting companies than I’ve seen in years. … By the end of this year, the general public will be talking about the next cycle for the enterprise.”

And yet, his latest investment has nothing to do with the enterprise.

Motif Investing, based in San Mateo, Calif., has raised $26 million, with Ignition Partners participating in the most recent round. The company could be described as Etrade meets Twitter’s trending topics.

For example, instead of investing in individual companies or mutual funds, the company identifies themes, or “motifs.”

The “Caffeine Fix” motif reasons that caffeine’s addictive qualities will continue to drive the popularity and success of Coca-Cola, Starbucks and energy drinks. The motif labeled “Drill, Baby, Drill!” is focused on the winners of domestic drilling. “Lots of Likes” focuses on the 20 most-“Liked” brands on Facebook.

As a Montana native, Connors prefers motifs about agriculture-based themes. See, we told you his interests were broad!

In an hour-long chat in the venture firm’s offices, which look like any other suburban cubicle farm, we covered a lot of subjects. Here are some of the highlights:

[ See post to watch video ]

One Bird to Rule Them All: Twitter Tweaks Its Branding Strategy

Mike Isaac — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 18:11:38 +0000

Throughout the company’s history, Twitter’s branding has consisted of a handful of icons, each distinct in its own way while remaining recognizably Twitter-esque. There’s the lowercase “t” symbol surrounded by an app-like square, the familiar bubbled text of Twitter spelled out in full, and, of course, the company’s little blue bird mascot.

But more than one icon can be too many. At least, that’s the philosophy Twitter Creative Director Doug Bowman seems to espouse. Twitter will lose all superfluous branding images — like said bubble text and “t” icons — offering instead a single, iconic image: A redesigned little blue bird.

Think of it as a sort of brand consolidation, akin to Nike’s iconic swoosh. Instead of the disparate ways Twitter’s brand appears in public, it’ll be one bird, one logo for partners to use and the general public to see. It’s smart, too: Simplicity is a hallmark of brand building, boiling down a product into a single concept, captured in an image.

Simplicity is the key word for Twitter in the company’s maturation process. It aims to become a service that non-techno-savvy users can understand — just look at last year’s complete site overhaul.

Here’s a super-short video on just how simple the new image is: It is composed entirely from three sets of overlapping circles, chopped up to form the new image. Cute. And smart.

E-Commerce Accelerating Due to Personalization, Pinterest and iPad

Sergio Monsalve — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 19:10:37 +0000

A sputtering economy isn’t slowing the growth of e-commerce. In fact, new data from comScore shows $44 billion in business now moving through U.S. e-commerce channels, up 17 percent from a year ago. More, the last three quarters show accelerating year-over-year growth.

Of course, e-commerce is a beneficiary of economic belt tightening, but there are much bigger factors at play. Economic pressures are combining with technology-driven disruptions to create a perfect storm of online opportunity. These disruptions are nothing new; what is new is the pace at which they are happening. Big, established retail players are having trouble adapting to this accelerating pace of change, while nimble start-ups feed and thrive on it.

I see three megatrends driving e-commerce change that I call the Three P’s: Personalization, Pinterest and iPad (well, iPad almost starts with a P). Together they ensure that U.S. e-commerce will continue to experience double-digit growth and pass the $100 billion mark in less than five years.

I recently attended D10, the D: All Things Digital conference, and the message from leaders like New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Tim Cook, Reid Hoffman and Larry Ellison confirmed enthusiasm on the future of ecommerce.

A lot of the private discussions I had at D10 also focused on the magnitude of this re-invention. Most agree that these three drivers are fundamental, and that the pace of change has never been this aggressive.

P1: Personalization — It’s All About You!

The emergence of the visual web — touchscreens and other new front-end technologies — enables a much easier personalization experience. For the first time, e-tailers can dish up very realistic virtual renderings of personalized SKUs that are then made to order.

Brands like Bonobos, Cafepress, Customink, Gemvara, Modcloth, Nike, Quiksilver and Vans are all revolutionizing online shopping, providing a rich, interactive and even creative experience. At Gemvara, for example, you can customize a piece of jewelry by selecting a design template and filling in your desired metal and stone. In real time, you see a realistic, virtually-rendered representation of your one-of-a-kind piece of jewelry. Gemvara then builds the jewelry to your specifications and delivers it in less than 10 days.

Another way to personalize the shopping experience is through social curation of products. Social technologies are enabling e-tailers to identify and target consumer tastes increasingly accurately.

With social sentiment tools, analytics and “big data” insights, e-tailers today can match products to consumers more scientifically, and on a much more granular level. Modcloth is a great example of an e-tailer applying a synergistic mix of analytics and social technologies to procure the right products for its community of consumers.

Innovative e-tailers are further personalizing the online shopping experience by empowering customer service and creating intelligence concierges. Imagine sales reps armed with answers to frequently asked questions, your purchasing history and your personal tastes. This emerging customer service looks and feels much different from the traditional help desk you have learned to dread. The best e-tailers are leveraging data to deliver a personalized customer experience that is not only better but more cost-effective.

P2: Pinterest — The Power of Eye Candy

Pinterest’s rise has been meteoric, even by social media standards. Launched in March 2010, the image-sharing site hit the 10-million-user mark in record time, and is already the third-largest social media platform behind Facebook and Twitter, driving more referral traffic than Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube combined.

According to a recent Shopify study, much of that referred traffic converts to sales. While Facebook still drives considerably more traffic, Pinterest referrals are 10 percent more likely to lead to a purchase. Some other significant statistics:

Pinterest users are older and have more purchasing power.
Pinterest-referred purchases are twice as big as those that are Facebook-referred.
The most popular retailers on Pinterest are Nordstrom, Williams Sonoma, Barneys, Vera Bradley and Neiman Marcus, indicating a higher-end user base.
In the year ended March 31, 2012, Pinterest’s share of social-media-driven revenue for retailers leaped from 1 percent to 17 percent.

Online retailers at the forefront of product customization agree. Gemvara reports that Pinterest referrals are outpacing other customer acquisition channels. Ultimately, I expect Pinterest to do for e-commerce what Facebook did for advertising. I see Pinterest as the platform that helps power the next generation of “lean-back” e-commerce experiences.

P3: iPad — The Ideal “Lean-Back” E-Commerce Device

Don’t get me wrong. If you know exactly what you want, search is still a very good tool. However, if you are in a more casual “gathering” mode, search comes up short. In my mind, iPad + Pinterest enable what Web 1.0 lacked and what physical catalogs have provided for many years: a “lean-back” e-commerce experience. Pinterest and the iPad interact seamlessly, further fueling the e-commerce channel shift toward a more delightful and engaging shopping environment.

According to a 2012 Q1 Mobile Study sponsored by RichRelevance, mobile’s share of e-commerce grew nearly 250 percent in the year ended March 31, 2012 — and the iPad accounts for two-thirds of the shopping, browsing and purchasing in this emerging channel. Compared to other mobile shoppers, iPad users:

spend significantly more time and money on retail sites,

have much higher conversion rates,

spend dramatically more, while buying fewer, more expensive items.

In fact, 90 percent of all mobile revenue is generated via iPads. The iPad’s average order value is even creeping ahead of desktop-based orders.

E-Commerce Roadmap

Disruptive forces, both technological and economic, are driving the retail channel shift inexorably toward e-commerce. This shift is accelerating as customer-facing technologies improve — especially those within the Three P’s described above.

E-commerce players must innovate quickly and continually to succeed under such rapidly changing circumstances. These factors clearly favor nimble start-ups, although companies like Nike are proving that established brands can adapt. Startup or not, companies vying for a piece of the e-commerce pie must innovate around the Three P’s or die.

The winners will be the brands who understand the Personalization, Pinterest, and iPad mega-drivers and leverage them to create rich and delightful customer experiences.

Sergio Monsalve @vcserge is a Partner with Norwest Venture Partners.

Wearable Devices: How Geeky Glasses and Wristbands Will Move Mainstream

Sarah Rotman Epps — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 23:45:25 +0000

We’ve all seen the movies: Gadget-laden heroes from James Bond to Terminator to Iron Man have long relied on voice-controlled watches and heads-up display glasses to extend their powers. Now, those gadgets are a reality, albeit a niche one. Google co-founder Sergey Brin was recently spotted wearing a prototype from Google’s “Project Glass.” People you know may even be wearing sensor-laden wristbands like the Nike+ Fuelband or sneakers like the Adidas adizero F50, which track your speed and workout stats. The military is prototyping dual-focus contact lenses with data displays, while university students experiment with clothing that reacts to our emotions. Nokia has filed a patent for a vibrating tattoo that could alert you when someone calls or texts you — the ultimate wearable.

Wearables have enormous potential for uses in health and fitness, navigation, social networking, commerce, and media. Imagine videogames that happen in real space. Or glasses that remind you of a colleague’s name that you really should know. Or paying for a coffee at Starbucks with your watch instead of your phone. Wearables will transform our lives in numerous ways, trivial and substantial, that we are just starting to imagine.

So what will it take to elevate these accessories from niche to mainstream? Hardware advances in battery life and the way sensors interact with each other will get us further than we are today, but the software platforms that drive the hardware hold the key to consumer adoption. In the same way that Windows took the PC mainstream and iOS and Android are powering the smartphone revolution today, wearables’ success depends on backing from one or more of the big five software platforms — Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook. These platforms — and their developer communities — hold the key to the consumer connection. How so?

Apple has the most polished marketing, channel and brand. More than any other company, Apple has the potential to make any product go mainstream (witness the iPad). Apple’s expertise in hardware manufacturing, its developer network, its marketing prowess and its channel strength in Apple Stores and partner retailers all add up to a fertile petri dish for wearables. Already, Apple has inspired a number of “app-cessories” built to sync with iOS devices, like the Lark sleep sensor wristband and the (now discontinued) Jawbone UP fitness wristband.

Google has an open platform and a license to dabble. Google’s Android is the platform of choice for WIMM Labs, the Sony SmartWatch and others because it’s open: Product strategists can build whatever products they want on top of Google’s code while still taking advantage of the growing number of developers and companies that build Android apps. Additionally, Google has crucial elements of search infrastructure, with the ability to recognize and retrieve vast amounts of information like location-based data, which could be the basis for many wearable device features.

Microsoft has the best depth sensor yet. Windows Embedded, Microsoft’s operating systems and related solutions for “intelligent systems,” powers a wide range of products from Ford’s Sync automobile information system to Polycom conference phones. But to date, these solutions have been geared more for enterprise use, and haven’t attracted the same breadth of professional and amateur developers that iOS and Android platforms have — a crucial component for taking wearables mainstream. But another Microsoft product, the Kinect for Xbox 360, has captured developers’ imaginations, prompting a Kinect application programming interface for Windows. The potential of a Microsoft powered wearable becomes much more tangible when you imagine the depth sensor of the Kinect turned outward from your body, toward the world rather than toward you.

Amazon has information on more than 100 million products and their buyers. More and more consumers are starting their product searches with Amazon. Its all-encompassing product catalog, detailed product specs and reviews and personalized recommendations would all be assets in wearables. But despite Amazon’s success in manufacturing the Kindle line, we think it’s more likely that Amazon’s wearables strategy will center on distributing apps for other companies’ devices, rather than manufacturing the device itself.

Facebook has a Rolodex — and facial recognition — for 800 million people. Facebook, like Amazon, has the tool kit to be a partner player in the wearables market. Facebook is controversially implementing facial recognition software to autotag photos from its 800 million users — software that would be a perfect fit with a wearable device. Like that guy on the train? Sorry, he’s “in a relationship.”

In three years, we believe wearables will matter to every product strategist, just as mobile and tablets matter today. And because the software platforms are the key to mainstream, these devices have the power to intensify the platform wars among the big five — over issues like talent, intellectual property and patents, developers and customers. Wearables will shift toward mainstream in three phases:

Phase one: Apple grows the app-cessory market with a deeper investment in wearables. For instance, by adding more sensors and connectivity to the iPod nano, as well as Siri voice control, Apple could immediately spark innovation in iOS apps and more accessories for nano beyond its existing watchbands.
Phase two: Google broadens wearable experimentation with its open platform. Our call that Google will dominate in wearables — at least in the short term — may be surprising given our skepticism about Android’s prospects on tablets in the past. But an open platform for experimentation is exactly what wearables will need to evolve out of the early stages.
Phase three: Microsoft competes with an “anti-platform” platform. With Windows 8, Microsoft is pivoting away from .NET/Silverlight to the open Web protocols of HTML5 and Javascript. This shift will be a strength for Microsoft to build on, promoting a future OS for wearables as a more flexible, scalable platform for developers than iOS or Android.

Sarah Rotman Epps is a Senior Analyst serving consumer product strategy professionals at Forrester Research. Follow her on Twitter @srepps. To learn more about this research, visit the full wearables research report here.

All Things Reviewed: Nike+ FuelBand and BodyMedia Armband on WSJ "Digits"

Lauren Goode — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 21:57:42 +0000

In case you missed the latest product review in our new All Things Reviewed section of this site: I joined The Wall Street Journal’s “Digits” show today to discuss the latest entrant into the data-tracking fitness gear market, the Nike+ FuelBand — and to decide whether it’s worth all the hype. You can check out what the device looks like compared to the BodyMedia Fit Link armband, which I also tested this past week:

[ See post to watch video ]

Getting Into (Data-Tracking) Gear With Nike+ FuelBand

Lauren Goode — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 13:00:08 +0000

Despite the fact that I’m a writer, which conjures up images of long days glued to the desk, I consider myself to be pretty active, and I try to maintain momentum by working out regularly. So I’ve been intrigued by the newest wave of wearable health and fitness products meant to track daily activity levels.

This week, I’ve been testing the $149 Nike+ FuelBand, as well as BodyMedia’s $199 Fit Link armband, with varying results.

The Nike+ FuelBand generated a lot of buzz when it was introduced in January. It’s currently sold out, aside from availability at a couple Nike retail stores in New York City. Otherwise, interested customers have to sign up on Nike’s Web site to be notified of the next shipment batch.

In my five-day test of the Nike+ FuelBand, I liked its design, ease of use, and overall coolness quotient. But I didn’t always find the “Fuel” metric — Nike’s new way of calculating exertion levels — to be super useful. On the flip side, while I wouldn’t give BodyMedia’s armband any design awards, it tracked more of the kind of data I’m interested in.

 The Fuelband is a plastic wristband with a smooth, rubbery coating that measures a wearer’s steps, calories burned and Fuel levels, and then syncs the data with an app on your iPhone. It also acts as a watch. The FuelBand comes in three sizes. After adjusting the fit using a small insert that comes in the packaging, I eventually forgot I was wearing mine, aside from some minor annoyances, like when it tapped against my laptop.

[ See post to watch video ]

The wristband’s display of LED lights really stand out, and garnered enthusiastic responses when people noticed it. There’s a single button on the band, for toggling between functions. A USB connector at one end of the FuelBand is used for charging the device and for syncing data through a computer.

Nike estimates that the battery will last up to four days without needing a charge, factoring in several “sync” sessions a day. In my test, the FuelBand went almost exactly four days without needing a charge, though this was skewed slightly because I plugged the FuelBand into my computer at one point to sync the data online, which automatically prompted more charging.

After registering my band online, entering in my height and weight, and setting my daily Fuel goal at around 3,000, I downloaded the free Nike+ FuelBand app from the App Store (the app is currently only available for iPhone). Syncing the FuelBand with the iPhone app was easy and took just about 10 seconds with a good Bluetooth connection.

On the main page of the app, the data appears in a circle with a giant Fuel score in the middle, but I could also view my activity in a linear graph. While the band only shows the number of steps taken, the app displays distance in miles, which was helpful. I found myself wishing the band would display distance in miles.

The Fuel number is drawn from a table created by Nike’s team of researchers, which studied various activities — for example, walking, running, playing tennis, etc. — and the levels of oxygen needed during those activities. While Fuel factors in your movement, it doesn’t factor in your height, weight, or body mass index. It’s meant to be a universal currency for everyone using the FuelBand.

For the most part, my Fuel levels were in line with my activity levels, but there were some aspects of Fuel I thought were sort of bogus. My Fuel level on Monday was hundreds of points higher than the next day’s level, even though I went for a two-mile run on Tuesday. On Wednesday, I lifted some light weights for about 30 minutes, which netted me 207 Fuel points, and then jogged for 20 minutes, which nearly tripled my Fuel score. But then I sat on a plane for 4.5 hours, so I didn’t reach my goal of 3,000 Fuel points for that day.   On Thursday, I worked out twice, which is not a regular occurrence for me, but I did this for the sake of testing activity bands. Both workouts were aerobic, and lasted around 35 minutes. And yet I still didn’t hit my Fuel goal that day.

One explanation for this, according to Nike, might be that I was more consistently active on days I didn’t exercise, like Monday (which would make sense, because I was running around the South by Southwest festival in Austin that day). In the Nike Fuel world, one great hour of exercise isn’t supposed to make up for 17 hours of inactivity.

  By connecting to Facebook and Twitter, FuelBand wearers can share and compare Fuel scores. I liked the competition it created with other friends who were sharing their scores and I liked the reactions I got from the Twitterverse; to me, that was the best part of Fuel, and I could see why this would be motivating for users.

	Nike+ FuelBand	BodyMedia Fit Link	Fitbit Ultra
Form Factor	Wristband	Armband	Dongle, clips to clothing or wristband
Measures	Movement/Steps, Activity Levels, Calories Burned, Nike “Fuel”	Movement/Steps, Activity Levels, Calories Burned and Consumed, Heat Flux, Skin Temperature, Sleep Efficiency	Movement/Steps, Activity Levels, Calories Burned and Consumed, Sleep Patterns, “Flower Power”
Estimated Battery Life	Up to 4 Days	Up to 4 Days	5 to 7 days
Mobile App	Yes, iPhone only	Yes, iPhone and Android	Yes, iPhone only
Waterproof	Water-resistant, but shouldn’t be submerged	Water-resistant, but shouldn’t be submerged	Water-resistant, but shouldn’t be submerged
Price	$149	$199, plus $6.95 a month for data-tracking	$99.95

  For comprehensive data tracking, I actually found the BodyMedia Fit Link armband to be more useful than the FuelBand.   Like Nike’s device, and the Fitbit, the Link armband measures steps and overall movement, but also uses sensors to detect changes in the skin’s surface temperature. So, while it doesn’t measure heart rate (the beauty of this new wave of fitness bands is that many of them don’t use heart-rate straps), it measures the body’s reaction to changes in heart rate, according to BodyMedia CEO Christine Robins.

I also liked that BodyMedia’s product incorporated weight goals, my caloric intake as well as output, and my sleep patterns, through a comprehensive online dashboard. Access to these advanced analytics online will cost users $6.95 a month, after a few free-trial months.

 One night, I slept wearing both the FuelBand and the BodyMedia band. The FuelBand, which isn’t supposed to measure sleep patterns, only showed that my activity level had flatlined. The BodyMedia band, on the other hand, recorded how many hours and minutes I was actually sleeping, out of the total time that I was lying down, and calculated my sleep efficiency based on that. 

 The BodyMedia Fit Link band has its own drawbacks. There’s no display of information on the band itself, and it’s hard to forget you’re wearing it. It’s a bigger band that fastens to your arm, whereas the FuelBand feels like a thick bracelet. The armband also costs more than the FuelBand, and in my experience, syncing my Link armband to my iPhone was problematic. The company plans to release a new app, due this spring, that allows for better Bluetooth syncing, so users can update their BodyFit iPhone app and Web accounts at the same time.

 For users looking for an activity-tracking wristband that tells you when and how much you moved throughout the day, the Nike+ FuelBand may work. But for serious weight-trackers or people looking to track segmented workouts, a product like a BodyMedia band or even a Nike+ SportsWatch would probably be a better fit.

How Jimmy Fallon Uses the Nike FuelBand (It's Naughty, of Course)

Lauren Goode — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 18:07:56 +0000

The fitness and gaming industries are getting more and more serious about gathering data about their customers. But that doesn’t mean comedian Jimmy Fallon isn’t going to poke fun at them.

Moderating a SXSW panel today called “Digital Sport: Know More, Do More,” Fallon asked a group of execs, as well as gold medal-winning Olympic athlete Allyson Felix, why data gathering is becoming increasingly important in sports and gaming.

After introducing himself as a lover of technology, as evidenced by his impressive Twitter following, Fallon shook his wrist up and down emphatically to try to boost his Nike Fuel, the new currency by which Nike measures activity for FuelBand.

“That’s why 12-year-old boys have higher Fuel levels,” Fallon quipped, to a series of laughs and groans from the audience.

“Really, Nike+ is pretty cool,” Fallon added. “There’s this one loop I used to walk around my house that I thought was two miles — and it turns out it’s only one mile.”

Nike’s vice president of digital sport, Stefan Olander, said Nike’s foray into digital data tracking through its gear has taken a practice previously known only to elite athletes and made it available to everyone. Nike used to be a product company, he said, but with Nike+ and the FuelBand, it’s becoming more of a service company. By offering data tracking, “you’re offering a service, too,” Olander said.

“Two million EA games have been played in the last month alone,” said Andrew Wilson, executive vice president and head of sports for Electronic Arts. By gathering data on that activity, “it’s like crowdsourcing for how to make a better game.”

“It used to be that we’d make a game and present it,” Wilson added. “Now we just present the components of the game and continue to build it out based on the conversation from the online community.”

In recent years, the market for wearable fitness tech for casual athletes has grown rapidly. See our earlier coverage of devices like the Fitbit, Jawbone UP and Nike FuelBand to get a sense of how some of these devices work. According to a report last year from ABI Research, wearable wireless sensors for fitness and well-being are expected to surpass 80 million devices by 2016, eclipsing the wireless sensor markers for professional and home health-care monitoring.

Fallon asked Nike’s Olander what his power workout song was. “Eye of the Tiger,” someone in the audience correctly guessed.

At the end of the panel, an attendee challenged Fallon to a race down the aisles of the room, which Fallon gamely agreed to. Sadly, the results were masked by the crowds in the aisles and at the back of the hall.

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What’s Up With Jawbone UP? A Peek Inside the UP Testers Program.

Lauren Goode — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 23:04:19 +0000

Yesterday, a limited supply of Nike+ FuelBands became available for order again, after quickly selling out when they first launched last month.

If the early buzz over a rubberized activity-tracking wristband that syncs with your smartphone gives you deja vu, it might be because you’ve seen this all before — with something called the Jawbone UP.

Oh, right. The UP! So, what’s going on with the Jawbone UP?

Unfortunately, what we don’t know is still more than what we do know. Jawbone, which is known for its slick audio products in addition to the UP, paused production and agreed to issue no-questions-asked refunds for faulty UP bands back on Dec. 9. The company has declined to say anything specific about when it might resume production of the device, or if consumers will see a hardware update.

A spokeswoman for Jawbone has said that refunds are still in progress, and reconfirmed that the company still doesn’t have anything to share in terms of timing.

Jawbone did recently update the UP iPhone app, as it said it would; based on the update description, which includes vague “bug fixes,” the app update seems incremental.

We also know that Jawbone’s UP testers program is ongoing.

As part of the program, volunteers are sent UP bands to test and offer feedback on. They’re also issued challenges, and asked to weigh the UP against competing devices. Participants are required to respond to regular surveys and had to sign a binding confidentiality agreement, meaning that, outside of designated UP tester channels, they’re not supposed to blog, tweet or talk to the media about the product.

The program kicked off in early January and was invite-only (it’s now closed to new participants).

Below, you can see some of the questions Jawbone is posing to UP testers:

Readers, are you still using your UP wristbands, or have you returned them for a refund? Feel free to leave your comments below.

(UP band photo courtesy of Flickr/m8roberto)

Nike's New High-Tech Sneakers Will Tell You How Much Air You Got on That Dunk

Lauren Goode — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:00:17 +0000

Looks like the basketball players of tomorrow will boast that they’ve got data-tracking game.

A new Nike+ “pressure sensor” is coming to Nike basketball and training shoes. The sensors will track data about wearers’ movements and transmit it wirelessly to their iPhones. The enhanced basketball shoes are meant to track the movements of players during practice sessions and games, including (but not limited to) how high the wearers jump. The training shoes are meant for casual and competitive athletes involved in any intense fitness activity.

Nike has been adding sensors to its athletic gear since 2006, though some of the products send data to an iPod or accompanying fitness watch rather than to a smartphone. The company says the Nike+ community has grown to more than six million “digitally connected” athletes.

Last month, Nike introduced the Nike+ FuelBand, a lightweight rubber wristband meant to be worn all the time to track fitness levels, which are measured in a Nike-branded activity currency called NikeFuel.

With these new basketball and training shoes, Nike says, workout statistics can be shared with friends on social networks. They also offer a “showcase” mode, which allows wearers to superimpose their live data onto a video that can then be shared with friends. So now, when a heated debate arises about who jumped higher on the court, you can take it inside, to Facebook.

A couple of unanswered questions — which I’ll ask Nike in a short while, and update as needed — is whether the sensor uses Bluetooth or another kind of wireless technology to transmit the data, as well as how far the reach of the sensor is. Most casual basketball players I know wouldn’t want to carry their smartphones in their pockets while playing (and I’m imagining it’s the same case with pro players). So would the user have to head to the sidelines or locker room and be within a certain proximity of his or her phone to transmit the data? Or does the data sync automatically?

And I’m curious to hear more about how verticals are actually measured. For example, if one foot edges higher than another, is the ultimate measurement an average of the two verticals? Or is it from the foot that got higher?

The company’s first sensor-enabled basketball shoe will be the Nike Hyperdunk+, which will cost $250 and hit stores this June. The first training shoes that work on the Nike+ system will be the Lunar Hyper Workout+ for women and the Lunar TR 1+ for men.

Nike has said LeBron James will wear the Nike Hyperdunk+ shoes this summer at the London Olympics.

Update: Nike’s vice president of digital sport, Stefan Olander, offered some more details on how the new pressure sensor works.

It reads four key pressure points in the foot to track when the feet leave the ground, Olander said. That data is combined with accelerometer technology to measure gravity and overall movement.

While data transmission in the “old” Nike+ sensors and running sneakers is enabled through Nike’s proprietary radio protocol, the latest Nike+ sensors use a new kind of Bluetooth technology that is said to be faster — and saps less power from connected devices. The data is stored locally on the sensor, and users can (wirelessly) upload the data to their iPhones when they’re done with their basketball or training session.

Also, the new pressure sensors are put into both left and right sneakers — unlike earlier versions of Nike+ sensors, which slipped into just one shoe — to more accurately measure the wearer’s movements. Whether the user takes off from the left foot or right foot — for example, when shooting a layup or attempting to dunk — Nike knows the timing of the foot pressure; the company claims it has created an algorithm that is more than 96 percent accurate in measuring jumps.

I wasn’t at today’s press event, but here are some tweets from those who were, including, naturally, Nike:

Improve every time you step on the court or in the gym. Introducing Nike+ Basketball & Nike+ Training #innovate http://t.co/7dsnBBwq

February 22, 2012 8:23 am via Nike Publisher ReplyRetweetFavorite

@Nike

Nike

Nike has just unveiled a Hyperdunk shoe with a pressure sensor that tracks every move & allows you to upload it.

February 22, 2012 8:21 am via Twitter for iPhone ReplyRetweetFavorite

@darrenrovell

darren rovell

#Nike is arguing that it will bring the power of its own lab to any athlete through technology. I like the idea of the connected athlete.

February 22, 2012 8:18 am via Twitter for iPad ReplyRetweetFavorite

@jeffjarvis

Jeff Jarvis

Nike+ will tell you how high you jumped when you okay bball!!! That’s unreal!!

February 22, 2012 8:23 am via Twitter for iPhone ReplyRetweetFavorite

@omid

Omid Ashtari

Here’s a promotional YouTube video featuring Mr. James himself, showing off the sneakers and how another player’s vertical data is transmitted to the iPhone:

Path Now Has 2M Users, Having Doubled Since It Relaunched Two Months Ago

Liz Gannes — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:00:25 +0000

Path got the second version of its product a lot more right than the first. The well-designed mobile journal app is now one of the most promising attempts to build a more personal and intimate social graph.

In the two months since Path 2 launched, it has attracted a million new users, according to Path CEO Dave Morin. That’s roughly the same amount Path got in its entire first year.

(Path still has a long way to go; Morin’s former employer, Facebook, announced this week that it has 845 million users, and the social juggernaut has in the past year added “close friends” lists and better sharing and filtering tools.)

Beyond the two-million user milestone, Morin shared a bunch more stats and info about Path’s progress to date.

On the engagement front, he said 70 percent of people who use Path in a week return the next week.

Path users have created over 50 million items of content and half a billion pieces of feedback. The latter is a somewhat inflated stat, because “feedback” is created every time a user looks at content on Path. But for reference, there are 15 million pieces of feedback created on Path per day now, versus 10 million total in the first year, Morin said.

The most common types of content shared on Path are photos, “thoughts” (status messages) and sleep records (users can manually note when they power down for the night and when they wake up in the morning), in that order.

There’s one song posted on Path per second, and the most popular artist is Drake.

Am I getting too “in the weeds” here? How about some geographic data: The U.S. is by far Path’s biggest country, but other fast-growing contributors include the U.K., Germany, Japan, France and Korea.

San Francisco-based Path had 15 employees when Path 2 launched; now it’s up to 25.

What’s next for the company?

Well, it launched tilt-shift photo and video filters this week. Next up are extended platform tools (Path already has a deal to get health data from Nike), smarter friend-request filtering, and perhaps a Windows Phone app, Morin said.

So, perhaps the obvious next question — given Path raised Series A funding a year ago — is when will Path hit investors up for more money?

That answer was more inexact. “Sometime,” Morin said.

(Photo description credit: Dave Morin accepts the 2012 Crunchie award for best design from Google’s Marissa Mayer; (cc) Kenneth Yeung — www.snapfoc.us on Flickr)

DailyBurn CEO: Fitness-Tracking Devices Aren’t Gimmicks, but They're Close

Lauren Goode — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 18:47:59 +0000

Health-and-fitness-tracking devices have become all the rage lately. But one fitness-tech CEO dares to say many of them aren’t much more than glorified accelerometers, adding a note of skepticism to the excitement surrounding these gadgets.

Andy Smith, CEO of IAC-owned DailyBurn, says that the benefit of fitness-tracking tools goes away after the first few weeks, and users ultimately fall into the same activity — or inactivity — patterns as before.

“They do help a small subset of people,” Smith said. “You find that there are type-A personalities that like to track everything, and that’s great. For others, it might give them a little jump start. But the value proposition of those devices after the first few weeks goes way down.”

DailyBurn is a fitness-data-tracking company that is now focusing on fitness content. The company pivoted partly because data-tracking wasn’t all that effective, Smith said.

Last week, Nike introduced a $150 lightweight wristband with a tri-axis accelerometer for gauging activity levels; earlier this week, Fitbit — maker of the popular Fitbit device — announced that it had raised $12 million in Series C funding to continue making fitness products.

Nike’s FuelBand just became available for preorder, so it’s too early to tell how enthusiastic consumers are about that particular device. And while it’s unclear how many Fitbit units have sold since it hit the market in 2009, the newer Fitbit Ultra is listed as one of the top 50 products in the health-and-fitness section on Amazon.com.

Another wearable fitness device, the Jawbone UP, is currently in production limbo as the company deals with technical and hardware issues, but the wristband was initially received with excitement from some consumers.

“I feel like these are not quite a gimmick, but are close to it,” Smith told AllThingsD. “You get people to spend $100 to $150 bucks on something that’s just a glorified accelerometer — which, by the way, you have in your phone, too.”

“I think people know when they’re not active,” Smith added. “They know if they didn’t move around enough today. I don’t buy it.”

Smith’s opinion is informed by the fact that DailyBurn used to be more data-oriented, but has since shifted its strategy become more content-focused, he said.

DailyBurn first launched in 2008 under the name Gyminee. Back then, the company was tailored more toward fitness data tracking and the sharing of data through social networks to help users meet their weight loss goals.

In May 2010, the company was acquired by IAC. At the time, the company claimed 500,000 members; Smith said it has around two million users now.

Following the acquisition, DailyBurn introduced the DailyBurn Tracker app, as well as food-tracking app Meal Snap, an attempt to spur weight loss motivation by giving caloric estimates based on photos of food.

Ultimately, Smith said, constant tracking isn’t necessarily the best way to facilitate that.

With DailyBurn’s newest fitness product — a personalized Web video program that streams over smartphones and the iPad to users’ TV sets — the company is focused on getting people to exercise four to six times a week, for 30 minutes a day, at a good level of intensity. It’s not something you buy that’s a quick fix, Smith said.

Readers, what are your thoughts? Are health-and-fitness tracking devices useful or useless?

Amid Increasing Competition, Fitbit Scores $12 Million in Funding

Lauren Goode — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:00:16 +0000

Fitbit Inc., maker of a popular fitness device that clips to clothing and tracks users’ activity levels, has raised $12 million in Series C funding.

The new round comes entirely from existing investors Foundry Group, True Ventures, SoftTech VC and Felicis Ventures.

The company said it plans to use the funding mainly for hiring and for aggressive product development. Fitbit declined to elaborate further on what type of new product or products it has up its sleeve, except to say that it is now looking ahead to other connected and affordable health-and-fitness devices for the year, and is hiring top engineers to get the company there.

But Fitbit’s next steps — no pun intended — probably need to be very strategic ones.

The funding round comes amid increasing competition from other makers of wear-’em-and-forget-’em data-tracking devices. While Fitbit has been a leader in this area of health-and-fitness tracking, Jawbone, a maker of audio products, launched the $99 UP wristband tracker late last year, which was initially received with enthusiasm. And Nike just introduced its version of a polymer-encased wristband, the FuelBand.

The Jawbone UP has since suffered technical difficulties, forcing the company to refund unhappy customers and temporarily pause production.

But with the $149 FuelBand, Nike has brought big-brand cachet to activity tracking. And Nike isn’t just targeting the serious athlete or runner anymore — it’s going after the casual athlete and the desk jockey, too.

While some fitness devices involve the use of pedometers, accelerometers or galvanic skin-response sensors, Nike’s band promises to combine oxygen uptake with the activity tracked through the device’s tri-axis accelerometer for a high-tech reading. To be fair, it’s not entirely clear yet how that differentiates the FuelBand, and we won’t be able to gauge how well it works until we can get our hands on one and test it.

The Fitbit also uses a three-dimensional accelerometer to measure users’ steps and activity levels. When the $100 Fitbit device launched in 2008, it punched up the idea of the average pedometer, and offered hassle-free, wireless uploading of 24-7 personal analytics and activity data. Fitbit also created a Web dashboard through which users can monitor their activity levels; for $50 a year, Fitbit users can view even more detailed analytics.

In October 2011, the company introduced the Fitbit Ultra, which added a digital clock, a stopwatch and an altimeter that measures elevation gain; a Fitbit iPhone app was launched, too.

San Francisco-based Fitbit, which recently started selling Fitbits in Canada and the U.K., declined to say how many units have been sold to date. In the U.S., the Fitbit recently became available in Target stores through a retail partnership.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month, Fitbit also unveiled the Fitbit Aria, a Wi-Fi-enabled “smart” scale, as Forbes reported here. The company plans to ship the scale starting in April.

(Fitbit photo courtesy of Redefinery/Flickr)

With FuelBand, Nike Gets Into the Ultra-Wearable Fitness Game

Lauren Goode — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 23:02:21 +0000

Another lightweight, polymer-encased fitness wristband has hit the market. But this one comes from Nike.

The Nike+ FuelBand measures time, calories, steps and “NikeFuel.” It uses an accelerometer to measure movement, has built-in USB and 20 LED flights that flash red or green to show your progress, and can connect wirelessly to the iPhone via Bluetooth.

The FuelBand comes with a free iPhone app, and is social network friendly, for those users who want to share their activity updates with Facebook, Foursquare and even Path. For now, the FuelBand app is iOS-only. Stefan Olander, Nike’s vice president of digital sport, says that the company will eventually explore other mobile operating systems for the app.

Nike, for competitive reasons, currently isn’t sharing details on how the band calculates users’ NikeFuel levels, whether they’re running, skateboarding, or doing any other kind of physical activity. The idea of NikeFuel — a measurement or score of a user’s activity — sounds a little bit like the Fitbit’s “flower power” currency. It’s a way for users to compare workouts without necessarily referring to data like calories burned, which may differ from user to user.

With FuelBand, Nike seems to be taking a slightly different measurement approach from those of other makers of health-and-fitness bands. The company says it maps oxygen uptake against a three-axis accelerometer during both activity and downtime to measure the metabolic equivalent of a task (a.k.a. M.E.T).

The Jawbone UP, for example, measures steps, heart rate, calories burned and sleep patterns. Basis is also focused on measuring heart rate and other metrics with its Basis B1 Band (no chest strap needed). And BodyMedia’s Fit armband uses galvanic skin response (GSR) sensors to measure body temperature and how much heat has dissipated from the body to determine the amount of energy that’s being used.

The Nike+ FuelBand will be available for preorder in the U.S. on Jan. 19, and will cost $149 — more than the UP, less than the B1 Band, and in the same range as BodyMedia’s bands.

Nike has a few other wearable workout tools already on the market, but its FuelBand is really meant to be worn all day, so Nike device users don’t have to switch from day wear to workout wear. With the FuelBand, Olander says, Nike is aiming to hit all areas and levels of the fitness market, not just serious athletes and runners.

Here’s a quick rundown of how the FuelBand compares to Nike’s other fitness-monitoring devices:

There’s the Nike+ SportBand, which currently retails for $59, has a slightly bulkier form factor, and works in conjunction with a sensor that goes under the sock liner of your left-foot Nike+ compatible shoe. This one is water-resistant, tracks distance, pace, time elapsed and calories burned, and stores 30 hours of running data. (It’s also available as a “Livestrong” SportBand.)

There’s also the $199 Nike+ GPS Sportwatch powered by TomTom, which works with or without a Nike+ sensor as well as a Polar WearLink Transmitter for measuring heart rate. Compared to a single rubbery wristband, that’s a lot of stuff to carry around; without those devices, the watch alone shows a mapped route and tracks time, distance, pace, heart rate and calories burned. It plugs directly into a USB port on your computer to upload run data and recharge the battery.

And the Nike Amp+ iPod Remote is no longer available through Nike’s store, but way back in the day — four years ago — it was a nifty device that synced the Nike watch to users’ iPods and provided voice updates on time, distance, calories and pace during workouts.

Zappos Founder Focuses on Brand Loyalty for His Next Gig

Tricia Duryee — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:12:16 +0000

As soon as Nike agreed to start selling merchandise on Zappos, founder Nick Swinmurn stopped wearing Adidas and became a huge fan of the Nike brand.

“I have about 50 pairs of Nikes in my closet, and it seemed to me like I should be treated differently by Nike than a customer who has zero pairs,” he said.

The thought inspired Swinmurn to start RNKD, which is launching in beta today. Customers can create profiles and upload pictures of items of clothing they already own by snapping a picture and designating brands and where they bought each piece.

“The idea was to bridge the gap between consumers and brands by using what people already have in their closets,” Swinmurn said.

Users will be rewarded with badges and points for uploading photos, and will have the opportunity to win gift cards based on their participation. Swinmurn believes brands could use RNKD as a way to offer clothing at a discount to their most dedicated fans.

The emphasis is on the brand, rather than the store at which the apparel was purchased, which is how many other loyalty programs are designed.

Swinmurn, who left Zappos before it was sold to Amazon, also gained inspiration for RNKD after starting a small clothing line called Dethrone, which creates gear and clothing for practitioners of mixed martial arts. He said he sells 99 percent of the apparel to small shops. “We have no idea who walks into the shops and buys the product,” he said.

Swinmurn is hoping to tip the market on its head. Brands are already giving discounts on clothing at stores like Ross and T.J. Maxx, and on online flash sales sites like Gilt Groupe, ideeli and Rue La La. But those discounts aren’t being given to the biggest fans of the brands.

Instead, Swinmurn argues, discounts should go to consumers who deserve them.

RNKD is based in San Francisco, and is self-funded by Swinmurn, who has an engineering team of one.

Klout Redesigns to Emphasize Personal Influence (Video)

Liz Gannes — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 04:14:16 +0000

Klout plans on Tuesday to launch a redesign of its site that makes it more obvious what the company does: help users understand and take advantage of their social influence online.

Klout went through a lot of change in the last year. It went from two to 30 employees. It raised $8.5 million in venture capital from Kleiner Perkins and Greycroft Partners. It tweaked its influence ranking algorithm many times (often tweaking the people who have come to depend on it, who sometimes saw their score lowered). It moved to a funky new office in a former shoe warehouse in San Francisco’s hippest start-up neighborhood, SOMA.

And last but not least, Klout had to deal with exponential increases in the amount of data it processes and delivers each month. For example, the company is now on track to process about 1 billion API calls per month, up from 100 million in January of this year. That’s just insane.

What Klout didn’t do in that time is change its Web site, or make clear to visitors what its business model is and who it is serving. The company is trying to do that today.

Klout CEO Joe Fernandez describes what his company offers as a “social credit score.” He told NetworkEffect, “We want to be a standard. We want everyone to know their Klout score.”

Meanwhile, all sorts of companies are finding Klout useful. The company, which has only ever responded to inbound sales queries, according to Fernandez, has run campaigns for Audi and Hewlett-Packard, and works with Nike and Disney on an ongoing basis.

(Fernandez is pictured above wearing his custom Klout Nikes; in the video below he explains why it’s more interesting to help people understand their influence rather than companies understand who is influential.)

While Justin Bieber may have the highest Klout score of all–a perfect 100–effective campaigns often target people in the 40 to 60 range, who are topically influential rather than “mega superstars,” as Fernandez put it. (I don’t take freebies, but I’m apparently in the sweet spot, with a Klout score of 53.)

Klout finds these influential social media users and emails them about special, often local, promotions–say, a trip to Toronto to inaugurate Virgin America’s service there (which has since been discontinued, sadly), or a free laptop from HP, or a weekend in Napa using the new Audi A8.

Recipients of Klout’s emails about free stuff–which are not contingent on tweeting about the goodies–open the emails 80 percent of the time and opt in 70 percent of the time, said Fernandez. And because the promotions are so targeted and have measurable influence over their followers, the effective CPM that brands pay is “still really low,” he claimed.

But Klout feels it’s important to clarify that it is a consumer-focused business. “We’ve thought of 16 possible businesses but the only place we make money is campaigns,” Fernandez said. “We want to be Google, not comScore,” he said, explaining that he means it’s more valuable to be an enabler of many businesses than an analytics seller.

Klout’s business is similar (but not necessarily directly competitive) to other social endorsement companies that use its free API, like Ad.ly and MyLikes (Update: A representative for MyLikes comments that the company has stopped using Klout.). That’s an overlap the company is well aware of, said Fernandez. “We’re a company that’s built on everyone else’s API, so we have to be cool about it and let the market evolve,” he said. “Five hundred of the 2,000 [companies using the Klout API today] are probably doing things that compete with things we may want to do.”

[ See post to watch video ]