Meet Cody, The Casual Fitness Coach And Social Discovery Tool For Everyone Else

Today, there’s a long list of apps and services that sit at the intersection of fitness and mobile technology and leverage everything from social dynamics and behavioral economics to Quanitifed Self-inspired tracking to motivate us to be more active and drop a few pounds. There’s Lift, Nike+, Basis, RunKeeper, Runtastic, Fitocracy, Endomondo and MyFitnessPal — the list goes on and on.

Rather than simply adding another me-too product to an already-crowded space, two former Microsoft product managers launched Cody earlier this year to offer an experience they think has been missing from the world of mobile fitness. Co-founders Pejman Pour-Moezzi and Paul Javid tell us that the majority of fitness apps today tend to cater to hardcore fitness enthusiasts, who get a lot of mileage out of wearable gadgets and obsessive data-tracking.

By nature, many of these products revolve around activities where GPS and accelerometer-based tracking and metrics really come in handy, like running and cycling. Of course, not everyone wants to track every second of their day or exercise routine, is wearing a Fuel Band (or some alternative thereof) or is an avid runner.

Rather than targeting hardcore Quantified Selfers or focusing on running, Cody is going after casual fitness enthusiasts by emphasizing sharing rather than tracking and by building an experience that’s more reminiscent of Instagram and Vine than RunKeeper and Nike+. On Cody, users can add photos, videos, tag their location and leave status updates — actions aimed at making it easy to share the story of their daily fitness routines, rather than the metrics.

Users can log and share workouts across a range of categories, like Crossfit, Yoga, Barre, weightlifting, walking, running and cycling, and 70 percent of the workouts logged fall outside of running and cycling, the co-founders tell us.

“One of the things we want to tap into is the group-fitness movement,” Javid says, “which happens to be one of the fastest growing segment in fitness.” The goal instead is to create a mobile experience that people don’t just open when they have something to track. Since launch, Cody has seen a lot of activity around group-fitness categories, like CrossFit, Yoga and Barre, but 85 percent of user sessions on Cody don’t even include a workout, he explains.

By allowing users to describe their workout, follow their friends and top users — along with commenting on their status updates — and by recommending articles and offering tips, Cody is building a social fitness experience that centers around consumption. The app also incorporates some familiar tracking features, allowing users to review past performance and view personal highlights in graphical layouts and swipe through a calendar of each of your activities, while filling out their personal profile that is shown to others in the network.

While there’s value in being able to browse through a shared workout feed to check in on what your friends are doing, a key part of creating a social fitness experience and a “fitness graph” like this is discovery. And up until now, that’s largely been missing from Cody. But today, Cody is adding a new feature called “Explore,” which makes it easier to discover people and workouts, and browse through other Crossfitters, yogis and weightlifters with one tap.

Explore intends to make it easier to find and follow people by grouping them into categories, so that you can search and discover workout pals by activity, Featured Users or Featured hashtags, like “#5K,” for example. Like Edomondo and other apps, Cody has also set out to add value to its fitness network by acting as a virtual coach.

After users download the app, they’re asked to identify their goals, whether that be running 10 miles or reducing a little bit of stress, which Cody uses to surface content and tips relevant to those goals. Now, with its Explore feature, Cody is adding another piece of the puzzle in pursuit of being able to more accurately recommend friends, workouts, information and venues based on their activity and interests.

It’s a similar path to the one followed by Twitter and Foursquare — the more data it has on you, your friends, your favorite workouts and workout spots, the better it can help you find people you’ll enjoy meeting, following or working out with, and content that better helps you meet your goals.

By providing a familiar Instagram-like feed and Twitter-inspired Hashtags in a clean, simple design, Cody is reducing some of the friction less hardcore fitness enthusiasts might experience at the thought of downloading another fitness app. If Cody can successfully strike content deals with top fitness publications to offer quality fitness content and offer support for various fitness-tracking health gadgets, there are plenty of ways for Cody to incentivize potential customers.

Furthermore, Cody hasn’t yet settled on a business model, but by, say, offering top yoga instructors the ability to post five-minute instructional videos in an activity feed that users can access for a fee or by allowing local gyms to create profiles and target in-stream ads (a la Twitter) at local exercisers, it has some potentially cool opportunities to begin monetizing, while adding value for local businesses and instructors.

However, with Fitocracy already offering a popular, fitness-dedicated social network and with the bevy of fitness apps out there that have a running head-start, Cody has its work cut out. Apps like Runkeeper already have sizable user bases and data pools to work with, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine them putting that to use to enhance the discovery experience at some point down the road.

Cody is off to a great start, and while the road ahead is a steep one, by targeting more casual exercisers, focusing on adding value to the social, mobile fitness experience and catering to a wider range of activities, it may be able to find its niche in a crowded market.

Disgruntled 'Xbox engineer' details unannounced game sharing and social features

A self-professed Xbox engineer has taken to Pastebin to share his thoughts on Microsoft's recent Xbox One policy changes. Describing the backlash around the Xbox One's online requirement and used game policies, the engineer says "I feel that if we spent less time on them, and more time explaining the great features we had lined up and the ones in the pipes, gamers and media alike would have aligned to our vision." Microsoft's first official comment on its online plans and used game policies caused initial confusion thanks to contradictory statements, but the company eventually detailed the policies fully. Earlier this week, Microsoft was forced to change its policies, following criticism that made it into the mainstream. "We at Microsoft have no one to blame other than ourselves for failing to convince those hesitant to believe in our new system," says the engineer.

He then goes on to detail a Family Sharing feature of the Xbox One that has been scrapped due to the change in policies. The feature would have allowed Xbox One owners to share their game libraries with other family members, regardless of their location. However, the engineer reveals that Family Sharing would only let family members access a "demo mode" of the game for between 15 mins and 45 mins, and in some cases an hour. After that time, the shared game would cease and a user would be forwarded to a marketplace to purchase the full game. It's impossible to verify that these are the words of an Xbox engineer, but sources familiar with Microsoft's Xbox plans have revealed to The Verge that the company was discussing the idea of limiting each Family Sharing session to one hour and that game progress would be saved so you could play through the hourly caps or purchase the full game to continue uninterrupted. The engineer notes that Microsoft was contemplating limiting the number of times Family Sharing could be accessed per game until it was purchased.

Family Sharing appears to have been part of a broader social approach to the Xbox One. "The motto around the offices for the family plan was 'It's the console gaming equivalent to Spotify and Pandora' it was a social network within itself!" The engineer claims that Microsoft is building a "natural social network" for Xbox One. "Each Xbox Live account would have a full 'home space' in which they could post their highest scores, show off their best Game DVR moments, what they've watched via Xbox TV and leave messages for others to read and respond to," says the anonymous engineer. The Vergeunderstands Microsoft has been working on a number of social aspects for the Xbox One, including the ability to let other gamers subscribe to a feed of shared updates in a similar way to Facebook or Twitter.

The anonymous posting ends by mirroring Don Mattrick, Microsoft's Xbox chief, in his approach to the online requirement. "For people who don't want these amazing additions, like Don said we have a console for that and it's called Xbox 360." While it's possible that Microsoft may bring back many of these policies at a later date, or enable Family Sharing for digital content, the change of heart has disappointed this particular engineer and we're told many others. Microsoft was clearly aiming for the future with its Xbox One approach, but its initial announcement and messaging didn't outline the benefits strongly enough while competitors were pointing out some of the obvious flaws in the internet connection requirement and disc-based used game sharing. Despite the initial setback, Microsoft's Xbox executives still believe in their vision. Marc Whitten, Microsoft's Xbox chief product officer, told The Verge recently that he believes "most people will choose to be connected, and play online, because just what they can do is so powerful with the architecture of Xbox One."

Microsoft's social network updated with animated GIF feature and other creation tools

Microsoft opened the doors to its Socl social network back in December, but the company has kept fairly quiet about its plans for the site ever since. After launching as a limited beta, Socl's mix of Facebook and Pinterest-like features has left Microsoft's social experiment in a research state with little focus on promoting its existence. Microsoft is aiming to keep Socl somewhat relevant with the addition of some new creation tools to help users share video and image content on the service.

The first addition is a Blink feature that uses an app for Windows 8 or Windows Phone to create short animated GIFs. The GIFs, or Cliplets as Microsoft calls them, can then be shared on Socl. Microsoft has a dedicated section for Blink, alongside three other creation tools. The Collage tool has been updated with a method to collage together images, links, and videos from the web or those uploaded directly to the service. Pictotale is another addition to the service, acting as a meme-generator to overlay text on popular images. The final addition is Video Party, which simply creates a playlist of videos to share with other Socl users.

Microsoft doesn't appear to have any ambitious plans for Socl, instead it's clearly using the service as a test bed for individual social-related research projects. The new Blink feature originally debuted on Windows Phone after the Microsoft Research projected created an app to take multiple photos and create an animated GIF. If the individual features prove to be popular then it's possible we'll see them more tightly integrated into Microsoft's devices and services in the future.

Disgruntled 'Xbox engineer' details unannounced game sharing and social features

A self-professed Xbox engineer has taken to Pastebin to share his thoughts on Microsoft's recent Xbox One policy changes. Describing the backlash around the Xbox One's online requirement and used game policies, the engineer says "I feel that if we spent less time on them, and more time explaining the great features we had lined up and the ones in the pipes, gamers and media alike would have aligned to our vision." Microsoft's first official comment on its online plans and used game policies caused initial confusion thanks to contradictory statements, but the company eventually detailed the policies fully. Earlier this week, Microsoft was forced to change its policies, following criticism that made it into the mainstream. "We at Microsoft have no one to blame other than ourselves for failing to convince those hesitant to believe in our new system," says the engineer.

He then goes on to detail a Family Sharing feature of the Xbox One that has been scrapped due to the change in policies. The feature would have allowed Xbox One owners to share their game libraries with other family members, regardless of their location. However, the engineer reveals that Family Sharing would only let family members access a "demo mode" of the game for between 15 mins and 45 mins, and in some cases an hour. After that time, the shared game would cease and a user would be forwarded to a marketplace to purchase the full game. It's impossible to verify that these are the words of an Xbox engineer, but sources familiar with Microsoft's Xbox plans have revealed to The Verge that the company was discussing the idea of limiting each Family Sharing session to one hour and that game progress would be saved so you could play through the hourly caps or purchase the full game to continue uninterrupted. The engineer notes that Microsoft was contemplating limiting the number of times Family Sharing could be accessed per game until it was purchased.

Family Sharing appears to have been part of a broader social approach to the Xbox One. "The motto around the offices for the family plan was 'It's the console gaming equivalent to Spotify and Pandora' it was a social network within itself!" The engineer claims that Microsoft is building a "natural social network" for Xbox One. "Each Xbox Live account would have a full 'home space' in which they could post their highest scores, show off their best Game DVR moments, what they've watched via Xbox TV and leave messages for others to read and respond to," says the anonymous engineer. The Vergeunderstands Microsoft has been working on a number of social aspects for the Xbox One, including the ability to let other gamers subscribe to a feed of shared updates in a similar way to Facebook or Twitter.

The anonymous posting ends by mirroring Don Mattrick, Microsoft's Xbox chief, in his approach to the online requirement. "For people who don't want these amazing additions, like Don said we have a console for that and it's called Xbox 360." While it's possible that Microsoft may bring back many of these policies at a later date, or enable Family Sharing for digital content, the change of heart has disappointed this particular engineer and we're told many others. Microsoft was clearly aiming for the future with its Xbox One approach, but its initial announcement and messaging didn't outline the benefits strongly enough while competitors were pointing out some of the obvious flaws in the internet connection requirement and disc-based used game sharing. Despite the initial setback, Microsoft's Xbox executives still believe in their vision. Marc Whitten, Microsoft's Xbox chief product officer, told The Verge recently that he believes "most people will choose to be connected, and play online, because just what they can do is so powerful with the architecture of Xbox One."