Ch-Ch-Check It Out - Photo Feature

I realize there is nothing new or unique about posting pictures to a website. MySpace does it, Facebook does it and so do a thousand other websites. Uploading photos may be old news, but I'm showing you this because it's the first and most important step to using our cornerstone feature: Places. What's that? You want to see the Places video? I'll have to save that for another post, so for now..check out the video below:

Post by: Bobby

Digg Dugg

So we added the ability to Digg our posts. If you're feeling up to it..we'd appreciate the diggs and getting dugg and all that fun stuff. Can you Digg it?

Check back tomorrow for some cool videos of platform features.



Post by: Bobby

Email Errors - We're On It.

We realize some of you may have received multiple beta invite confirmations and we're working on correcting the problem. We can't exactly crawl into your inboxes and remove excessive emails, but in a nut shell here is what happened: Our email provider didn't give an affirmative response when we batched up your email. The lack of response caused our provider to continually attempt to send your confirmation email until it got the response it needed. Unfortunately, the lack of response from the provider convinced them you were not going to get the email, resulting in multiple messages. Again, we apologize for this and we're doing everything in our power to correct the issue. Thanks for understanding.

Update 5:30pm (est): We've fixed the problem and everything is back to normal. Hooray.


Post by: Bobby

Grab The Mic And The Ma Bell Will CONNECT You...

Ok, so it's been a long time, I shouldn't have left you without a dope beat to step to... but there is good reason for the time gap - we're ironing out the seams and preparing to ROLL OUT (Ludacris not Transformers) the beta.

Our dev team has been working non-stop for the last month - No showers, no video games, and a lot of tacos. The floor is covered with 4th meal, it smells like feet and everyone is ready to launch. That being said...the beta invites are coming, just be patient and I promise it will be well worth the wait.

I thought I'd talk about one of the really cool tools we've managed to implement into our platform and one of the reasons we haven't launched our sites just yet. It's a little thing called Facebook Connect and it has the ability to seamlessly move you between Facebook and our Lifefitter sites with out a lot of hassle. In a nutshell, one click on Facebook Connect will allow you to interact with all of your Facebook friends from any of our 20 sites.

Facebook does a great job of keeping you connected with your family and friends, and we don't want you to ever have to worry about building a friends list from scratch, which is why Facebook Connect is such an awesome tool. It works hand in hand with all of our sites to provide you with a seamless social networking experience. Taking your friends with you is just as important as knowing what happens between sites.


Here's a quick example: On Outpacker, your friends set up a connection to go hiking next weekend, but sometimes you forget to log in to Outpacker because you're always on Facebook. Facebook Connect will relay the news, post it to your News Feed and BAM, now you know about the news from Outpacker without leaving Facebook. You'll always feel connected without the hassle of logging into multiple sites.

So there you have it, another cool feature: Facebook Connect

If anyone wants to follow us on twitter just go to: http://www.twitter.com/lifefitter

We usually post cool stuff about our beta fish Marcus, stuff we're working on, and random bathroom breaks.



Post by: Bobby

That was Fatboooonned!!

Even with all of the backlash we've received for our skateboarding network, these guys decided to film a little Fatboneage.

Take :30 sec to watch:

Platform Progress Update

I thought I would take a few moments to go over some of the features we are working on for the platform and answer one of the more burning questions that we have encountered in the forums since this whole process began.

If you’ve been keeping up with us, you know that our goal is to help our users create strong, new friendships. One of the ways in which we hope to do that is by encouraging members to join each other on dives, bike rides, hikes, or whatever else your passion involves. I mean, who couldn’t use another fishing buddy right? To that end, we’ve created an application we call “Connections” to make it all happen. Here is a screenshot of a Connection on TrailGrind.

*Please note - we are using TrailGrind (mountain biking) as the example. If you are waiting on a different brand in our Active Lifestyle Channel everything will be customized for your affinity.*



As you can see from the other links on this page the platform has all of the basic social network tools along with the info needed to connect a group on an upcoming trail ride including the place, date, time, and a description. It also includes handy tools like a “Comments” section and a “People Connecting” area for getting to know who you might be riding with, should you decide to join.

So looks simple right? Why are we seeking beta testers so aggressively instead of just rolling it out and building as we go? Before I answer that let me take a moment and try to explain just how important Connections are to the platform and how it separates us from other sites you know.

The biggest difference between the Lifefitter platform and a generic social network is our goal to help you make NEW friends versus just keeping in touch with existing friends. To accomplish this goal the Connections application must facilitiate this process but before that can happen, it takes PEOPLE using the platform.

We have modeled the Connections application similar to match making utilities on dating websites but instead of helping you find a suitable dinner companion, we want to help you meet other mountain bikers (or SCUBA Divers, or Cyclists, or whatever your passion is).

Web history has taught us that when dating websites fail to attract a large and active membership base very quickly they fail 99.9% of the time. So to go back to the original question of: "Why are we seeking beta testers so aggressively"? Simply stated, just like a dating website we need enough members on each affinity/brand to create connections for you from day 1. If we don't have a good base of beta members there won't be any connections and you won't find much utility in the site. So, we decided to launch the beta invite process early and aggressively solicit invite requests.

Some of you who requested your invite early in the process are already getting anxious. We get a lot of "what the hell is going on?" emails. This is the first time we have shared exactly what we are up to with our Connections application and we hope you can appreciate the need for an extended beta marketing push and we ask that you please be patient. We have setup Pages on facebook for every brand and we invite you to use these pages and connect with other prospective beta members as we all await the platform.

We are doing our best to promote the upcoming release and get as many people signed up as possible and we would love for you to help. Some of you are participating in the viral MSA promotion which is really helping to spread the word and help us get that much needed large membership base. We appreciate that. For those that were not interested in MSA, we would still really appreciate it if you tell your friends by emailing or posting a link to the site...every little bit helps.

We will continue the pre-marketing push aggressively until there are enough people sitting on go to make a run at this thing. We hope you will remain excited about the platform and be ready to jump in and use it on day 1.

Here are a few more screenshots of the Connection application tools so you can view, create, search, and manage all of your connections.





So, thoughts? Comments? Dislikes? Let’s hear it. After all, we are here to provide you with an exciting, useful tool that will encourage you to grow your friendship tree tall and wide. Thanks for dropping by and checking out what we’ve been up to. Anyone in Columbia want to play a couple of sets at Hampton Circle tomorrow? :)


Post by: Josh

T-Shirts, T-Shirts, T-Shirts

Everyone loves a new t-shirt right? We love 'em even more if they are free.

We are now up to 18 brands taking beta invite requests and we need a large enough test group to populate the database and test some of our more advanced features that rely heavily on the network effect. So, we have aggregated all of our brands onto 1 page and you can request invites for any that match your interests.

http://www.lifefitter.com/tshirts/?s=6

We do ask that you only request invites for sites that match your interests because to actually get the shirt you will be required to use the site features, post some good content, make a few friends and report any bugs. It's really easy if you have a passion for the network but it would be a pain if you're just trying to score some free threads. So please be considerate and save beta invites for people who really want them.

In the next week or so we hope to post our first "Development Update" here on the blog and show the world what we have been working on. We think the features are really coming together well and we are excited to show everyone what we've been cooking. In the meantime, head over to the link above and get on the invite list for any brands you're interested in.


Post by: Jeff

Staying Happy and Productive in a Fast-Paced Environment

When you invest as much of your time into work as we have invested here at Lifefitter, it’s important to make the most out of your free time and your hobbies. Take me for instance. While I “draw pictures all day” here at work, I am also a trained percussionist, a late-blooming 3.0 tennis player, and a die-hard college football fanatic. These things are great ways for me personally to blow off steam and have a little fun, but what are some things that I can do to decrease the amount of “funk” that follows me home from the office in the first place?

Here at Lifefitter, we believe that it is important for individuals to de-stress, and a company as a whole needs to make time for engaging, fun, activities. We plan outings with our whole team. We go out to lunch together as a group. We even tailgate together every home football game. (Go Gamecocks!)

The main benefit of these company activities is an increased understanding of the things that drive your co-workers. It’s one thing to sit beside someone in an office all day. It’s something completely different to learn about their family, their interests, or just generally relate to them on a new level. Of course, once you’ve formed that deeper connection with Steve down in Accounting, it’s always a blast to pepper him in bright green paintballs and taunt his [lack of] crazy-good paintball skills.

If you and the people you spend most of your day with can’t laugh together, how can you ever expect to accomplish goals together? Your job can be one of the most stressful things in your life. If you could take 50% of the stress out wouldn’t you want to? Well, the easiest way to start is by organizing any sort of activity outside of work. It doesn’t have to be crazy or anything. Just go have a group lunch, or spend a Sunday afternoon watching the game with your new buddies from IT.

Developing a level of comfort with your co-workers inherently leads to a calmer, happier you, and I think that’s something we can all get behind, right?

Posted by: Josh

Authoritative expression in the long-tail

As with most social media firms, a key component of our business model is the creation of User Generated Content (“UGC”). However, simply having users fill your database with gobs of content is not a golden ticket to high Google rankings and massive organic search traffic. If this were the case, every Google result would be clouded with MySpace pages and random blog posts.

So why doesn’t UGC normally score high in organic search? Well, there are many reasons (we could write a pretty thick book and not cover it all) but the single biggest is that most UGC represents the voice of one person and the content is not authoritative.

Dictionary.com defines authoritative as “substantiated or supported by documentary evidence and accepted by most authorities in a field.”

So, does a blog post from Joe Public titled “The best place to SCUBA dive in North America is Key West” meet the definition of authoritative? Probably not, and if a user performs a Google search for ‘Key West SCUBA Diving’ they are not likely to find Joe’s post in the top results, but look what’s there at number 3, the Wikipedia page for ‘Key West’.

Now, if you have ever done a search on Google you have seen result listings of UGC from Wikipedia. Why do Wikipedia pages rank so high in organic search? Again, that’s a long story but the biggest reason is the authoritative nature of this content.

Wikipedia represents a collaborative effort from a large user base to provide the most authoritative content on a given topic. Instead of having all Wikipedia contributors telling their own version of the story they all work together and speak with a fact based single voice. Millions of websites then link to these Wikipedia pages for reference. This teaches Google that the content is useful and should score high in search but none of this would have ever happened if the content were not collaborative, and therefore authoritative, in the first place.

A big downside of doing UGC the Wikipedia way is that it robs people of self-expression, which is a big motivator to create UGC. For example, Wikipedia is no place for Joe’s post giving Key West the best dive spot designation. If Joe was not able to express this opinion in his writings he might not even have the desire to create the content. While Wikipedia has a fanatical user base it’s numbers pale in comparison to the people like Joe creating more expressive content on other sites.

So, our goal with the Lifefitter platform is to give our members the tools to create authoritative content without taking away the self-expression that makes UGC fun and entertaining. How are we going to do it? Well, we won’t go into all of that just yet, but stay tuned.


Post by: Jeff

a minor milestone is reached...

Just thought I'd jump on the blog and announce that we have unveiled our 15th brand to the world. PaintSmack.com was put up yesterday and in the normal format we are taking beta invites. The creative team hopes to have about 10 more online in the next few weeks before the platform goes live.

So, what's going on with the platform? Well, we've been mapping some architecture stuff to ensure the scalability we need is right from day 1 and we've been doing some speed enhancement on the framework for the past week or so. This has meant a bit of a slow down in the feature development but we want to make sure our platform is super stable from the start.

Hopefully next week we'll be back full time on the user interface and the feature set. We are going to start on the mapping module the following week and figure that will take 10-14 days.

Obviously, we would like to have the platform tomorrow. To be honest, the buzz that's being created by our brand announcements is way more than we expected. It appears that some of our audience channels are just very hungry for a site that meets their needs. For example, ReefDrift already has over 20,000 fans on facebook. That's pretty insane when you figure how small the SCUBA demographic is but obviously they are a passionate group looking forward to a website to call their own.

Well, back to the dungeon.


Post by: Jeff

A lesson learned the hard way.

A few weeks ago I was reading an article in the September issue of Inc. Magazine about the company Skullcandy. For those that don’t know, they make headphones and target the youth market.

In the article, Skullcandy CEO Rick Alden was talking about their marketing strategy and how his entire advertising budget goes towards reaching the “core” segment of the action sports community. He offered a quote that said, “Conservative guys buy core products, but core guys will never buy conservative.”

We learned that lesson first hand this week when a couple of pro skateboarders named Steve Berra and Eric Koston decided they really, really, really think our skating brand Fatboned sucks a fat….well, you get the point.

Their post was merciless and pretty much took us to the woodshed for not understanding the skating culture. Some of their readers even said we were trying to harm the community by popularizing skateboarding.

Our intention with Fatboned, like all of our brands, is to provide the community it supports with unique tools to make new connections and enjoy their affinity even more. We are not working to create content or position ourselves as experts (that’s what the users are for) but the way this brand was blown up by the hardcore audience goes to show what a minefield web 2.0 has become. Fatboned has not even launched yet (we are just taking beta invite requests) and already the brand is on the ropes.

Our take-aways from this are to be sure we always step back and consider how our brands will appeal to the core (or hardcore in this case) segment of the audience. Apparently we missed something on Fatboned whether it be the name, the logo, the imagery or all of the above.

I modified his expression a little by changing the word ‘core’ to ‘hardcore’ but after the Fatboned debacle I printed Alden’s saying and hung it on the wall.



As for Fatboned, we are working the PR beat to put some spin on the situation in an attempt to turn the tides of core perception. At worst, we’ll end up losing a brand while learning a great lesson. At best, we might snatch victory from the jaws of defeat and end up with an even stronger brand that weathered a pretty rough storm. Stay tuned.


In closing on this day I would just like to take a moment and say NEVER FORGET 9-11-01.

Post by: Jeff

Lifefitter enters the blogosphere...

Well, we've been working away in the dungeon for a long time but we haven't documented much (read as anything) in the form of a corporate time line or blog. So, we have decided to change that and start an official blog.

Josh's test post will stay on the blog since it is technically the first thing ever posted on the blog (we're big on "firsts" in our office) but this is the first real post..

Right now we are working like crazy on 2 things.

1) the Lifefitter Platform (LP) that will power all of our social networks.

2) Polishing our first wave of brands and promoting our upcoming beta releases.

So far we have 12 sites taking beta invitation requests. We hope to have 25 brands online to participate in the LP release.

We are not trying to copy (or replace) generic social networks like Facebook and Myspace. Copying their features with a niche theme will accomplish nothing.

Instead, we will bring people together around common interests and foster not only existing relationships but also help create new ones which is something generic networks don't do well. Helping our members make new friends that share their interests is Lifefitter's primary objective.

We have some good ideas for the beta release and we'll see how they play out. We'll take the time to listen to our members and iterate LP to best achieve this goal.

All of that said, we won't be using this blog for corporate propaganda (well, not exclusively anyway - that's what press releases are for). Our goal with this blog is to allow team members to tell the world about our work and everything else we're up to. From clients to potential employees and business partners the blog will serve up the useful and the useless...all things Lifefitter.

We're excited about our journey and we're pleased to have you reading about it.

test

this is a test post to see colors and layout.