Free Beta Gift Promotion Update

Where is my beta gift? We have addressed this question many times in various formats and venues but we wanted to have a short blog post to refer to as needed.

For those members who originally requested a beta invite for a Lifefitter social network the beta promotion is still being honored.

As you probably remember, the offer was, “become an active beta tester, use the various features in our site, offer feedback and report bugs and get some sort of beta gift”. Although our product plans have changed over the past several months that’s still the plan.

About half of the beta invites been sent and hopefully the rest will be delivered in the next 30-45 days. We expect the actual beta development phase to last into next year but we will draw a line as it makes sense feature wise in mid to late summer, issue the gifts to those who qualify and close out the promotion.

Please note, there are some channels where we had no real traction (bowling, music and skateboarding for example) and for those user’s you will be invited to change into a different channel if you choose.

So, that’s where things are currently. We ask everyone to please read the previous blog posts linked below for more information.

Business Model Changes and How it Effect the Beta Promotion

Beta Promotion Gift Checklist

If you have additional questions related to the beta gift promotions please use the discussion board for this blog post to ask them. This will allow us to keep the information in one place and other participants who have similar questions and concerns can refer back to it later.
We will also expand this post from time to time as common questions come up to help centralize the information.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

1) Why are you “forcing” me to change my start page to participate in the beta?
You are free to use the site as much (or as little) as you wish. Yes, we “require” the page to be used if you are trying to participate in the beta gift promotion but if you have set it as your start page and you’re not happy with it (and therefore you don’t otherwise use it) please change it back to something else. Simply changing your homepage will not result in any free gift whatsoever and we don’t want anyone to think that’s the case. We hope you will still drop in from time to time and see what’s up, and as the features improve maybe you will reconsider in the future. We want you to be happy and we certainly don’t want to "force" you into anything.

2) Was the whole beta promotion a ploy just to get Facebook fans?
No. It was a marketing plan to target people with specific interests to use our social network. We didn’t plan for the first iteration to fail and we expected to have closed the books on this a long time ago. There have been some delays but we continue to press forward. If we wanted to scam you out of your email address we would have already sold it off and moved on. We’re trying to build a good product and honor all past commitments.

For what it’s worth, we never tied being a “Facebook fan” to the beta gift promotion. We actually ran a few low dollar contests for the fans and that, combined with general viral promotion on Facebook, led to the fan growth. However, we often asked our fans to request beta invites so we certainly understand how people perceive the two as being connected.

3) How could you have ever afforded this promotion in the first place?
We knew all along that only a very small percentage of users would actively engage with a start-up social network, use all of the features, report bugs and offer genuine feedback and therfore the cost of the program was estimated to be managable. We have set aside a portion of our budget for these gift items and we still have it set aside. Will everyone get a gift? No, but we hope those that don't qualify will learn enough about the site to remain a user and maybe you'll come away with something much more valuable, a few new friends.

4) I have done everything to qualify. Where is my free gift?
Since we are actively in the beta period now it is impossible for anyone to have "done everything". For people asking this question please read this entire post along with the other blog entries linked above for clarification. If you still have a question, please post it in the comment section on this post.

5) What would you like me to do as a beta gift promotion participant?
Honestly? Forget about the gift and don't let it have any bearing on your use of the site at all. We're not asking that so we don't have to send you anything, we're asking because that is the absolute best way for us to have active users helping to fine tune the site. When people offer feedback just so they can "check the box" towards their free gift it's usually pretty obvious and honestly, not all that helpful. We just want to make a great product that ultimately helps you create new friendships. Anything you can do to help us reach that goal is much appreciated, and it just might end for you with a cool gift.

We will add more questions as the come up. That's all for now.


Post by: JT

Friendship One: Charlie Harrison & Scott Dillon

Recently a few resourceful Startlikers used the comment board to connect and plan a mountain biking trip. To our knowledge this is the first connection enabled by Startlike and from what we understand “Friendship One” is off to a great start.

Startlikers Charlie Harrison and Scott Dillon live fairly close to each other and through a series of discussions they realized each was proficient in different outdoor pursuits. Charlie was an experienced hiker/backpacker while Scott was an avid mountain biker. They decided it would be a good idea to meet and share their knowledge and experience with one another.

So, on April 25, 2009 Charlie and Scott met to ride mountain bikes and Friendship One began.




Without sounding too corny, this is a BIG deal for us. Our corporate mission is to create friendships and although our strategy has gone through numerous iterations over the past year this mission has never changed.

We are honestly humbled to know that a connection was made that would not have existed were it not for our product and we hope this will be the first of many.

Most companies hang their “first dollar” on the wall. For us, we’ll be hanging this photo in honor of our first friendship created because there will never be another “Friendship One”.

Now, Charlie and Scott, please don't get in a fight!!


Post by: Jeff

Can I get a beta promo checklist to be sure I get some free stuff?

Since we started sending out beta invitations we have received a few inquiries from folks wanting to get a “checklist” of the exact steps they must take in order to get a t-shirt or other item in association with our beta gift promotion.

The “condition” to get the free gift is (and always has been) to be an active beta tester. Being active means simply trying out all of the features we release, offering useful feedback and reporting any bugs you experience. We have always wanted (and needed) to find REAL users with a REAL desire to see the project be successful.

Now, this is not going to be a popular post with some people but we’re not going to provide any sort of “beta checklist”. We have asked several times that people only looking for a free gift with no real passion for the project to please move on because they would likely not qualify anyway and just end up unsatisfied. We’ve always known that only a dedicated few would really jump into the fray with us and actively participate in all stages of the beta.

Our advice to all beta promotion participants is to simply jump in if you like what we’re doing. If not, please just don’t use it and maybe the others participating in the process will help shape a product you’ll want to use in the future. If you become a truly active user of the product the beta period should end with a nice little reward for you.

Here are a few answers to some other beta promotion related questions:

How do you know if I am active?
Your beta invite included a link that was encoded to track your use of the site. We will define active members based on their usage of the product features by using this tracking code.

What if I do everything but a technical glitch causes my tracking not to report?
We’ll do our best to avoid this but we can’t claim to be perfect. If there are disputes at the end of the beta we’ll do our best to resolve them fairly but our judgment will have to be final.

I don’t like it! Isn’t this whole thing kinda arbitrary?
We don’t mean to sound arrogant with this comment at all, but if you don’t like it, please just don’t try to participate. We have not taken a penny from you and we will not spam you, infect your computer with a virus, steal your facebook login, sell your name or do anything else to harm you. Seriously, if we had to give a gift to every person that blows into our site and posts a comment that 100 other people have already posted we’d be out of business in less than 24 hours. We look forward to sending beta gifts to people who give us some honest time and feedback but if you’re only here for the gift, you’re the last person we want to send one to because you are not helping reach our common goal at all.

I’ve been waiting on a t-shirt for 6 months. It’s a scam! You suck!
That’s not really a question but we’ve heard it more than a few times. If we were a scam, we would have long ago sold our database of sign-ups to some spammers for a pretty penny and started something new. We can assure you that nothing here is a scam. That said, we made several product development missteps along the way and, as previously documented, we had to re-tool things very late in the process. We hate it and we agree that we have sucked badly up to this point. Our new direction is showing promise and we hope it works. All we can do now is try to suck less in the future.


We hope you find this information useful. We figure a certain amount of flaming will follow but, to be totally honest, if you can’t appreciate the candor and inherent truths in this post, we were really just never meant for each other :-/


Post by: JT

If at first you fail…iterate.

We’ve been getting some questions on the status of the platform release and we haven’t had many answers for the past few weeks. We are happy to finally have a meaningful update.

We hit a strategic roadblock when we began to decide which brands and locations had the most interest and should be released first.

As you know, the goal of Lifefitter is to bring people together for real offline connections to enjoy a shared passion such as hiking, cycling, diving, etc. In order to accomplish this objective we need to have enough people on the platform to enable these connections. As you may remember, that’s the reason we were working so hard to put together a large beta invite list prior to launching any features.

So, what was the strategic roadblock you ask? Well, we had pretty good response to the beta push on some of our channels. The problem was, when we looked at the database of potential invitees to determine what geographic areas to launch first, we realized that our marketing campaign had not penetrated well enough in many specific locations.

So, our options came down to the following 3 choices:

1) Release the platform in our best-penetrated areas and rely on the early adopters to bring in other members (ie viral marketing) before becoming frustrated with the lack of connections and moving on.

2) Spend more money in specific markets and try to create large enough geographic concentrations to power the platform in select areas.

3) Revise our features to provide something more useful to early adopters that was not reliant on the network effect to provide user value.

After deciding that option A was very likely to fail and option B didn’t make much sense in the current economic environment, we decided on option C.

So, how do we hope to provide something useful to early adopters? I’d like to introduce you to Startlike. It's a browser homepage that has all of the basic features you need like Google search, custom news feeds and quick links to your favorite sites but it also has a few things much more relevant to your interests.

With Startlike you get an awesome photograph and a few links about your passion every day. You can join the discussion with others who share your interests and begin to create new friendships right away.

The response to Startlike has been great and people seem to love it. Our early adopters have shown no signs of becoming disinterested because the core features do not require a large user-base to be useful (ie they don’t rely on that pesky network effect like a social network).

Our immediate plan is to build on Startlike’s early success and increase its core functionality. Then, as it grows, we hope Startlike will realize its stated purpose and funnel users into the broader Lifefitter Social Platform to support our corporate mission of creating friendships.

There are literally tens of thousands of social networks on the web. Quick, name 5!! The reason most people can’t is because so few succeed. Early adopters leave before the network achieves scale and this results in a death spiral. We have always known overcoming this hurdle would be our biggest challenge and we are excited about the journey ahead with Startlike leading the way.

You may have a few questions, such as;

What about the Lifefitter beta I signed up for?
It’s still coming, albeit in slightly different form that we initially planned. For those of you who signed up for the beta to get a free gift of some sort by participating we fully plan to honor that promotion.

The deal was, you use all the features throughout the beta while giving feedback and we’ll send you the gift when the beta is complete. We’ve known all along that only a super dedicated few would achieve this goal and that’s still the plan. We hope you are excited to have Startlike and it’s functions as the first set of feature releases.

Everyone who signed up for the beta will be invited to get started and enjoy a Startlike channel. From there, we will release the social features along the way as the user base scales and hopefully, when it’s all said and done, you’ll have a few new friends.

What happened to my data where I signed up for a beta invite?
Nothing. As clearly stated in our privacy policy your personal information will not be shared or sold. Invites will still be sent to the email address you provided. The only difference is that the process now begins with Startlike.

What if I don’t like this “new direction” and want out?
First, we really hate to lose you. If you are passionate about a channel we hope you will choose to stay onboard and work with us to build a great network. That said, if you don’t want to participate, simply unsubscribe from the member list when your beta invite arrives.


Well, that’s where we are. Startlike is online with a few channels and you are free to take it for a spin. Once we stomp out some bugs we’ll release more channels and move into a broader open beta. From there, we’ll see how it goes.



Post by: Jeff

Mountain Biking 101 - Assume the Attack Position.

Last Saturday was a bit of an adventure to say the least. After a bit of arm twisting we convinced Jim, our CTO to get a new mountain bike, so the following morning we all met at a local trail for some MTB fun. Strapped and ready we brave the 40 degree weather and take off down the sandy paths of Sesqui's bike trail. For the first mile or so everyone cracks jokes about who's going to monkey first or be the first to endo. All of the jokes were funny for the first few miles, but 3 miles into the trail Jim finally confessed that he had just eaten french toast from Sonic and wasn't feeling well (nobody told him not to eat nasty, greasy junk food before biking). I asked Jim why he wanted Sonic, "I was hungry and it was the most appetising thing Sonic had and I didn't feel like going anywhere else." Fair enough, but next time get a powerbar. Jim's weak gag reflex and lack of stomach control is definitely a lesson learned.
French toast free and 10 minutes later we're all back on the trail and flying through sandy single track and pine tree forest. Towards the end of the trail there is a downhill section of steep root-filled twisting single track, nothing too difficult. At the bottom of the his is a small 3 foot drop formed from a web of tree roots which takes you to a fork in the trail. So here's the deal, I've ridden this trail and I knew it was coming up and I decided I didn't want to jump it because riding too fast will land you into a tree immediately after the drop. Instead of assuming the attack position, I do these 3 things in order:

• Hesitate
• Lock my brakes
• Whisper "Oh Sh*t"

Karma can hit you at funny times, espeically when you joke and imagine someone else endo-ing before you. I went over the bars and a tree root jumped out and smacked me in the nose; I was a human torpedo for at least 3 seconds. The end result is a lot of blood, a broken nose and a slight feeling of embarassment:


My lesson: When approaching rough terrain, assume the attack position.
.
Post by: Bobby

Want An Exciting New Homepage?

It's Tuesday afternoon and we're happy to announce a brand new homepage utility from Startlike, sister company of Lifefitter. Startlike is a custom web browser start/home page that covers the outdoor activities you're passionate about. It's an extremely simple and efficient start page with basic features like, Google web search and quick links to your favorite sites. It also has cool little hotlink tags around each image that link to cool facts, maps and videos. We're really excited about these new pages, and hope everyone else will be just as enthused.

Right now Startlike is testing 3 channels (SCUBA, Skiing, Camping / Hiking) and Lifefitter is powering them all through their active lifestyle brands. Eventually every passion will have a homepage they can enjoy every day. For now all of our SCUBA, Skiing and Camping lovers can get a new Startlike page:

SCUBA Startlike
Skiing Startlike
Camping and Hiking Startlike


Let us know what you think about Startlike!