Monday, May 28, 2007

Traineo tackles weight loss with Web 2.0

By Christopher Calnan

A young Cambridge company is ramping up its social networking website with a plan to expand its business while helping users slim down.

Traineo LLC, which launched its Traineo.com site last year, is now teaming up on marketing deals with more established companies to raise its profile in the crowded social networking space.

This month, Traineo plans to partner with San Francisco-based Dogster Inc., which operates Dogster.com -- a major pet-owner website that reported 542,000 unique visitors during April 2007. The companies will team on a promotion that encourages Traineo members to include their pets in exercise activities.

Traineo, which reports 55,000 registered users, has done similar promotions with L'Oreal, Pod Fitness and Nintendo's Wii product, CEO Alasdair McLean-Foreman said.

Traineo was started as a separate and more mainstream business to complement McLean-Foreman's HDO Group LLC, which operates an online retail store, HDO Sport. HDO sells high-end athletic products such as $430 heart rate monitor watches.

McLean-Foreman said he's targeting a general audience with Traineo, which enables users to create online support groups. Users establish a group of four "motivators," who receive regular e-mail updates on the Traineo users' exercise activities to provide encouragement or advice.

"What we're doing is providing tools to keep people motivated," he said. "It's not MySpace dressed up for health and fitness."

Traineo is correct in trying to provide tools, rather than content, said Matthew Lees, vice president of the Patricia Seybold Group, a Boston-based research firm. The web is littered with health and fitness sites that already offer plenty of tips and information, so the social networking aspect of Traineo is an important one, he said.

Also, teaming up with better-known brands provides Traineo with an opportunity to target users in specific demographics, Lees said.

In the health, fitness and nutrition category, Nielsen/NetRatings Inc., an Internet market research firm, ranks WebMD.com as the top site with 8.5 million unique visitors during April 2007.

Andrew Lipsman, senior analyst for Chicago's comScore Networks Inc., said social networking is emerging as a platform for health and fitness websites because it increases accountability, which can benefit members.

Traineo generates revenue from advertising and its sponsor groups, but McLean-Foreman declined to disclose financial details.