I enjoyed +Kevin Tofel‘s post on social fitness at GigaOm… I’m a big fan and love the data.
I don’t particularly care about the live streaming aspects though. To me it’s more about comparative results, challenges and motivations of the community. I now have social sports friends met through DailyMile and even here on G+.
I recently started to really use Strava which is a cycling community site that greatly enhances the experience Garmin let lag on Garmin Connect through social features and specific breakdowns of events like climbs which even get classified. Whether the data is being used to motivate (like Kevin’s insane number of continuous running days) or note personal bests, firsts or other achievements it’s all easily possible thanks to the data.
As has also been discussed recently on Google+ getting access to and enabling the meshing of our data for maximum use is still really missing in the market. Runkeeper seems to be leading the charge with their goal of becoming a fitness hub through the Health Graph API, but it’s still quite early.
Yup, as an athlete in training like yourself, the actual data I get from these sensors and apps is extremely valuable. Making the data accessible is key and I think apps have paved the way for that. I can also envision “connected” sneakers and other equipment so I won’t have to carry a smartphone or wear a GPS receiver on my wrist in the future. At some point — and I may not live to see it — I expect wireless coverage in some form to be everywhere. And it doesn’t have to be fast: a small GPS chip and EDGE radio in sneakers could be plenty to track / share data at a low cost in the future. The possibilities are really just beginning in this area! 🙂
we are clearly just at the beginning … and I’m happy to be on the “frontier.”
Amazing !! Bike Safe Jon !!