Traineo is a well-conceived and -designed "Fitness & Weight Loss" Community, and here we interview CEO Alasdair McLean-Foreman:
ANSWER: Thank you. Yes, it's certainly a very exciting time with the new web technology available to create tools to help a large number of people with their health via the internet.
We've actually been working on internet communities specific to health and fitness since about 2004 when we developed a subscription based 'online personal trainer' called HDO Training. We learned a lot since and we were able to target some of the key elements that make health and fitness work online when we developed traineo.com.
Traineo's core is motivation and support - every user on the site is able to build their own personal support network that leverages real-world relationships to help 'fill the void' that people find themselves in when they're setting out on a weight loss or fitness goal. Motivators are a key concept where friends and family provide accountability, support, and motivation. We've also focused on very simple, visual tools like graphs and icons to make the site as intuitive as possible.
We've got a lot of new features in the pipeline and we're very excited to see things grow in 2008.
2. We're seeing a rise in projecting experts to an audience-- tell us your plans here?
ANSWER: We've been very keen to listen to our users to really ask them what they want as we begin to innovate our value proposition to them.
Introducing experts is something that we're definitely working towards but at the same time from a logical health and fitness perspective, it's extremely important to recognize that everyone has they're own formula for fitness / weight loss / healthy living success.
Our team has an excellent understanding of health and fitness and as a former international athlete myself I know that a coach training one person might not necessarily work for another. The same certainly applies for what we're doing on traineo and it's actually the beauty of the community driven model of our website. If you take a look at the traineo forums for instance you'll see a huge variety of people in different stages of their lifestyle changes.
I think if we can introduce legitimate expert support whilst maintaining the open, community driven nature of our website we'll be able to offer something very valuable and it's something we're looking to do in the near future.
3. Do you see Traineo as a fit, on some level, with PHR and EMR platforms?
ANSWER: I think there is a great opportunity for traineo to integrate into electronic health record platforms. A very important part of our website are our simple data recording tools that accompany the social aspect of being a traineo member. The wealth of data that is being added by our users on a daily basis has tremendous value from a medical reporting standpoint and
we'd like an opportunity to use that to provide more value from the service.
4. Tell us more, if you would, about your meebo partnership?
ANSWER: Our meebo partnership was exciting as it allowed us to hook-up with a very complementary mainstream tool and build some traction with a great target audience.
Meebo and traineo certainly work very well together so the strategic relationship made immediate sense. Anything that allows our users to communicate and gain more support and motivation gives them a little more help towards their health and fitness goals.
5. How will you drive revenue, and what is your partnering strategy, if any?
ANSWER: We've actually been developing a number of exciting strategic relationships. At the beginning of the year we launched a very exciting project in partnership with The Times of London (Newscorp) - traineo technology is powering their new Times Health Club.
Obviously partnering with such a large media company was a great step forward for us and to see thousands (in the first month we've seen over 45,000 users registered) of new users in a targeted geography in the United Kingdom was excellent.
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