Runnersworld Update

If you had a site with 185k topics in your forums and more than 3.13M posts, you might feel pretty good. You would feel especially good if those thousands of regular users have figured out how to update their avatars and append signature lines to their posts, despite a hopelessly non-intuitive interface with limited possibilities, meaning that they were reasonably tech savvy crowd. Add to this that the site adds tremendous value to your print magazine, increases loyalty to that brand, and provides a prime platform for additional advertising revenues. In planning an update, what would you do?

If you are Runnersworld.com, not much. Don't get me wrong, on the surface they seem to have been busy: rebranding the community as 'the loop' and claiming that "The world's best running web site now has the world's best online community." Apparently the world's best online community includes user blogs, photo sharing, enhanced profiles, internal messaging. On the surface, they seem ready to have jumped into web 2.0 with this update; instead, they seem to have stumbled backwards into web 1.0.

No time tonight to run through a comprehensive strategy for Runnersworld but here are a couple thoughts:

First, take a look at profiles on Facebook, My Space, Linkedin or even Blogger. The new RW interface is better than it was, but what an opportunity lost. You have a community looking for friends, running partners, competitors---many of these folks would abandon their Facebook sites if they could do similar things on RW with people who share their hobbies. Look at some of the forum users---I have seen people with upwards of 30k posts! These people are living on the site.

That said, if you don't want to be in the profile business, that's cool too. Use Facebook Connect or OpenID. Or keep the same profile setup you have, but include places for your community members to link to their other profiles so that they can connect on that level. Or make it simple but relevant: shoe model and size, favorite running gear, link to a 'favorite route' map. Never create another vanilla profile page—we all have enough of those already.

Second, if you are going to add blogs to your community site, plan to consolidate your industry. There are thousands of runners' blogs out there, a good portion of those bloggers are RW community members. If you are going to run blogs on the community site, you want to create a situation where people are likely to move their blogs over. You might want to think about an import function that works with the major blog engines, you might want to ensure that people can skin the blogs, add links, the whole works. We are not talking about a group trying to monetize here---almost every one of the running blogs I read are just enhanced training logs (like this one). You have most of the interface already, but you need a little something to get us to move off of blogger.

Again, you may not want to be in the blog business, but then why add it? Go back to point one and give us places to connect to our blogs. A better use of resources would be to let us add feeds from our external blogs to the site so that the community discussions are informed by the broader realm of discussions.

Third, do we really need another email substitute? Better to do status updates (ala twitter/facebook) or wall posts (facebook). Look at how your people are using the forums…there are whole topics devoted to people updating their status before and after their workouts.

Finally, INTEGRATE. RW's training log is not the best on the market, but it is pretty good and many of the people in your community are also using it. Why integrate the training log into the community so that people could easily follow each other. Even better, add a calendaring function that integrates so that people can post planned workouts and report what they actually did. Here you simply need to take advantage of what your community is using and pull it together into a cohesive product.

I am a Runnersworld.com user and a happy one, but it is precisely my fondness for the site and the community of runners that makes me feel that this was an opportunity squandered by poor planning, lack of vision, and criminal lack of input from users. When you have a huge community that clearly wants to connect with each other, you don't need to reinvent the wheel. In fact, if you build a site that lets your users connect to each other and to the other places that do social media well, you win by not having to carry the overhead but serving as a portal where these multiple links connect.

 

 

Road to St Marks

I always feel like I should hit something of the confessional when I update this periodic blog. The gaps between posts have been large enough that I should provide a broader update---and in the context of a race report, perhaps that is appropriate. But not today. Looking at a short post, not a long confession.

Ran a simple six-mile out-and-back with my 15-year-younger nephew (a runner at DePauw) who barely broke a sweat while I pushed it in the heat. Getting a little wiser with age, I just ran my pace (avg 8:04/mile) without trying to prove anything. That said, I was probably feeling a bit more like a 8:15 pace so having a partner kept me close to the top of my game. My right hamstring has been bugging me for the past couple months and I had some of that on this run, no doubt exasperated by a 14-hour ride from Carbondale to Tallahassee the day before. It has been a long time since I ran with someone and I was surprised at how much more energy it takes to talk while running. Little things were also surprising, like the sound of the shorts swishing which I never hear because I am either listening to music or because little sounds.

This is the first time in a VERY long time that I have gone out for a run with someone. In my work life I spend a lot of time thinking about how to improve and foster collaborations---and pointing out that collaborative science produces BETTER science. I had a better workout and a more satisfying workout today running with someone---even doubling up on the amount that I got 'done'. Why am I such a soloist then on the trail? I think it is first a matter of laziness: I don't have a current running partner and I don't want to spend the time to recruit one. Oh, I have asked around a bit, but none of my immediate circle of friends is running seriously these days. Collaborative running would also require flexibility in my routine. With kids, my wife and I live on a pretty strict schedule that gets them fed and to bed but also gets us out to the gym. Having a 'collaborator' would require me to accommodate yet another person's schedule. And then there is the pace negotiation---because no two people actually run the same speed on the same day and it takes some skill to be able to admit your own pace needs and negotiate them with the other person. In the end, even though I know I am not getting as much out of my workouts as I could, the lazy factor takes over. The same is true in science. This requires some further thought, but I think it illuminates the difficulties of getting collaborative scientific teams off the ground.