The FuelBand activity is over, and the devices are returned. I asked a Nike executive at the conference about what happens to the other Nike fitness properties, now that it looks like Nike is recomposing the “Fuel” concept from calories to this weighted score. He said, oh, it will take months to reorganize that stuff. I said I was worried, because the FuelBand and site do so much less than I already getting from the Nike tracking I was using, and he said he wasn’t really involved with that. Fair enough.
Today the tracking product that drew me into the Nike+ ecology announced that their site will be down for months while they get rolled into the new thing.
The tracking product I’ve shifted to is still alive and well, prominently linked directly from the new hotness as a menu item, and so, one hopes, unlikely to disappear anytime soon. It is a very different product from FuelBand, and fits well into a mix that serves all activity levels. Nike+ has turned into a confusing crowd of sites and products, and simplification is good, but the timing woke me up abruptly this morning.
I am glad I’m not on the support queue that will take calls today from people who spent the last couple of weeks or months getting hooked on the website companion to a different piece of hardware they already bought. The email tells them that their data will still be there at that indeterminate point in the future, but these products are about habits and regular reinforcement. Months from now might as well be the heat death of the universe. I remember how entertained I was by rewards displays when I first found those sites, and I know I’d be pretty frustrated if I were waking up this morning to learn that I’d never get a chance to see all the levels.
So, which product do you use now?
I’m tempted to get some sort of fitness logger but I don’t have any background knowledge in that area, and would appreciate any advice.
I still use the pedometer built into my iPod – but that’s one of many computers in my life. The pedometer also uses the Nike site, and Nike has kept all the data – just rolled it into a different display environment – and it still does what I care about most.
I do more than a pedometer can log, though, and I don’t have one tracker to rule them all. 🙂
If your goal is to move more during the day, and to have an objective measure of that movement, day to day, the “pedometer+” model of FuelBand, Fitbit, Jawbone, and iPod/phone-based pedometers works well. Once you are looking at tracking more focused athletics, though, especially if it’s more than just running, it gets down to your precise requirements.