Fitness is a ridiculously profitable niche. They don't need that many users to reach profitability. The margins for stuff like P90X, supplements, and powders is enormous. People who are into fitness spend $1000s per year on it, and they should be able to tap nice piece of this market.
I would consider myself as someone who is into fitness, or at least lifting(deadlift 400, bench 280). I honestly don't think fitocracy, as it is today, is for people who are into fitness, but rather a gimmick to get people to workout.
For the most part, fitness people want tools that will help them improve their lifts, diet, overall looks and how they feel. Thus why some are willing to spend $1000's on supplements to assist getting them there. Knowing that I'll get a virtual badge if I pull 415 x 5 next time I'm at the gym gives me no extra incentive or edge towards accomplishing that.
I think you're missing the point of Fitocracy. It's not to get badges. It's to share your progress and contribute to the journey of other people. Recipes, workout plans, diets, all get shared. There are challenges for people to try new exercises, to expand their workout plan and learn new things. You may think you have skills and strengths far beyond the average user on the site. However, many users from /r/fitness have migrated over there and are making immense lifts.
I've learned about foam rollers, bridges, and countless other things about fitness by being a member. The actual weightlifting may be an individual journey and challenge, but gym culture has always been a social activity. To dismiss the entire site because it has colored badges which are provided for entertainment seems ignorant.
I know for a fact that I don't have skills or strength beyond others, I'm not even the strongest guy at my local gym :) If my initial post came off that way, I didn't mean it like that. I just wanted to preface it that I have been involved with fitness for at least a few years, and I know the founders are definitely involved in fitness for many years.
I'm not familiar with the /r/fitness people, but was more talking about the ironaddicts and anabolicminds of the world. Some of these people are definitely in the spend $1000's on supplements crowd, which is what I was replying about in jcampbell1's comment. I have not tried the site since it was first announced here, but at that time it was labeled as the rpg of fitness apps and did not appear to offer much in terms of routines, diet plans, nutrition tracking nor did I really think it was supposed to be aimed at that crowd.
Ahh got it. I found your tone rather dismissive and read too much into it. Fitocracy is a primarily a social network and tracking service, the rpg aspect is secondary. I'm not sure how they plan to monetize it, but I'm sure they would make a lot of money with an ad service like PoF or Facebook.
I do think informercials and many lousy fitness products have made me, as well as others, very quick to judge and write off most fitness products as gimmicky without much thought. It might not be fair, but its the world any fitness app must live in.
I'll preface this by saying my partner and I have been actively living fitness/bodybuilding-oriented lifestyles for quite a while, so we understand the motivations behind why people use these sorts of tools.
While some people are into Fitocracy simply because of what it is now, I think many are spending time on the site for the promise of what's to come. We're still very early stage and we have a lot more planned beyond simple points and badges. Many features on our roadmap are being designed precisely to help users push themselves and keep consistently progressing in their fitness.
I remember looking at your fitocracy profile when it was first announced and you are certainly an active fitness/bodybuilding person, I believe you even follow a lot of the same things I do (5-3-1, massive cheat days). Its why I stated "as it is today" in my initial comment, I'm certain you guys will be building more tools in the future and I'm looking forward to it.
It'll be interesting to see if this actually does take off...in its current state though for firefox a lot of the ajax elements conflict and make for a terrible experience when trying to log activities which is why I stopped bothering with the site.
This made me feel like I really need to work out. Sadly, judging by my history, my motivation for going to the gym lasts about five weeks. I've done boot camps for upwards of 18 weeks, but injured myself so badly that I had to stop.
Frankly, I get sick of being tired all the time and it gets to the point where just going to the gym feels overwhelming. Once I decide to skip one session, it becomes a lot easier to skip another, and then another and pretty soon, weeks have gone by and I know if I go to the gym, it is going to really hurt.
