At DietBetter, we’ve had 100,000 people play in our community weight-loss game. We continually survey them to monitor new trends in the fast-changing world of health and wellness. Here’s what we’re seeing, along with predictions going into 2014. Commercial weight loss companies like Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig continue to lose market share to do-it-yourself diets and free apps.
When it comes to weight loss, people want flexibility, value and convenience. In a year in which the stock market has surged, Weight Watchers has lost nearly half its market value. Why? Commercial weight loss programs like Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, and Nutrisystem are being leapfrogged by free apps that let people customize their approach to their needs. In our annual survey of DietBet players, MyFitnessPal, Lose It! and Fooducate have been among the most popular food-tracking apps. Our players also use exercise apps such as RunKeeper, MapMyRun and Couch to 5k as tools to motivate them to exercise. It remains to be seen, however, whether calorie-counting apps are sustainable as our players tell us that they fatigue from logging everything they eat.
2. People turn to goal-oriented social networks to help them change habits.
With Twitter’s IPOand LinkedIn and Facebook’s stock price doubling2013 may be remembered as the year of social networking. But a new kind of social networking has quietly emerged and it doesn’t connect you to people you know. Instead, next-gen social networks let you discover and befriend strangers who share a health-related goal, like losing weight or exercising more. NYU’s Clay Shirky has said that “goal-oriented social networking” is the future of social networking and it’s starting to get traction in sensitive areas of personal health where people don’t feel comfortable sharing on Facebook with real-world friends for example, updates relating to your struggles with weight loss and workout behaviors. Expect this to see a lot more of structured social anonymity in 2014.
3. Gamification is finally starting to deliver on years of promises.
Gamified exercise technology like the new Xbox Fitness lets you invite virtual celebrity trainers into your home to kick your butt (like Jillian Michaels and Tony Horton). While workout-at-home technologies have been around since Jane Fonda’s videodiscs, this technology is hitting its stride in terms of interactivity and realism. We see this as the beginning of a new chapter in interactive home workouts with technologies like Fitstar, Wello, and Daily Burn. At the same time, expect to see all these games become social, like everything else in our lives. Social support networks around health-oriented games can provide a powerful combination of confidential support and peer-to-peer motivation. We see a growing appetite for DietBet, our community-based weight loss game as well as CrossFit, the workout program that uses social media to foster competition and collaboration among its highly motivated participants.
4. Exercise devices like Fitbit, Jawbone and Fuelband gain popularity, but future remains unclear.
We have seen a surge of experimentation around wearable activity trackers like Nike’s Fuelband, Fitbit, and Jawbone’s UP. However, what remains to be seen is how these devices stay relevant after the initial excitement fades. We’re waiting to see what these companies invent to provide compelling reasons to engage with their devices over the long-termreasons to continue tracking steps and sleep after the first few weeks.
5. Thanks to new technologies, getting in shape has never been more fun.
Is it still exercise if its fun our user are flocking to anything that makes getting in shape funor at least less onerouslike a running app that simulates being chased by zombies (Zombies, Run!), mud runs (like Spartan Race and Tough Mudder) that turn endurance events into thrilling obstacle courses, and glow-in-the-dark night runs that are part road-race, part rave (Electric Run). What all these activities have in common is they bring people together to exercise in a way that doesn’t feel like work. And thanks to technology, it doesn’t need to entail coming together physically. Nike Plus popularized virtual competitions where you can run “with” friends who actually live across the country. MapMyRun, Runkeeper, and Runtastic have become some of the most popular apps. And Strava users obsess about winning the “king of the mountain” trophy against strangers who ride in their towns. What’s interesting to us is seeing this kind of virtual competition go from physical workouts to lifestyle competitions as people can now compete to lose weight and eat better. The idea of applying virtual competition to just about any healthy behavior is intriguing and we see fun and “social motivation” emerging as powerful trends in 2014.