Monday, March 17, 2008

MIT gamer tackles boredom of jogging with new site

By Brendan Lynch

Two years ago, video game designer Tom Söderlund was training for the New York Marathon in his native Stockholm, Sweden. He had one problem: "It was boring," he said.

Söderlund, who set up shop in the MIT Media Lab last year, is now launching a mapping and social-networking site called Zyked (a chatroom corruption of "psyched") as one way to make running more engaging.

The website, in closed alpha-test phase, allows runners to challenge and compete with their online friends. Runners can also map running routes and download them to mobile phones to track their progress -- even using a friend's previously logged time as a virtual competitor. Söderlund said he has 40 runners split between Boston and Stockholm testing the site.

"It's not really running season in either place, but there's a few of them struggling to run," he said.

Söderlund said he hopes to generate revenue by putting ads from Google Inc. on the site and by having local businesses -- sporting-goods stores or restaurants -- sponsor an online trophy for first-place winners in a given competition.

Söderlund, a serial entrepreneur who has started an online art gallery and co-founded a location-based game company called It's Alive in Stockholm nearly a decade ago, is running Zyked out of the Media Lab as a one-man show. He is putting off venture funding for the time being, he said.

"A few times I've made the mistake of bringing in venture funding too early, so this time I'm going to bring it along as far as I can myself," he said.

The exercise space a natural extension for social networking, said Matthew Lees, a consultant at the Patricia Seybold Group specializing in customer communities and social networking.

"There's a lot of interest here, there's opportunity and it's a natural fit for the online world," he said.

Lees added that he wouldn't be surprised if an exercise-related social network emerged in two or three years as a recognizable brand even to people who don't use it, like Facebook Inc. and MySpace.com.

But more likely, a site such as Zyked would be absorbed into a larger company.

"The probable endgame is to be acquired by a fitness company like Nike or Polar or by Facebook," Lees said.