So I had this Runkeeper post planned for a while. After all, my original review from 2009 was getting a bit old. I know that some people use Runtastic, Runmeter or Dailymile, but I wanted to have a look at Nike+ today and see if my verdict still held, especially from the social point of view. And phew, did it ever. This might be a Europe uses Runkeeper vs. America uses Nike+ thing but the gist of my network says 4 people use Nike+ compared to about 25 using Runkeeper. And among the Nike+ users were 3 Americans (so not really helpful). So that is settled. Then the new Runkeeper update happened and PandoDaily commented it prompting me to start writing.
Let’s address the second only briefly and firstly. The author has most likely never used the app before, otherwise he wouldn’t have argued that Runkeeper is now the latest fitness app jumping on the social bandwagon. Sorry, man, but the RK Street Teams and sharing options have been around for years. The difference is that the feature now is on the mobile app with faster access to the social graph.
But, this Runkeeper update is really quite cool. I can now nudge my neighbour across the hall to get his lazy bum on the street, have a better structured overview of my activities and can set reminders for the next work-out (which will help actually running more often, I am sure). It would be better even, if I could see what kind of activities my friends have performed – a click on the name on the leaderboard at the moment does nothing.
In my experience the app sometimes still messes up the GPS-tracking, thusly messing up speed and distance but over the years these instances have become rare anomalies. What’s more, I really like how the company has expanded, has taken hold of the online Health Graph, has rebooted it’s focus to get closer to its community again and is continuing to help its customers to get more fit.