Tracking Workouts
When we started SportingCircles we made a decision to support SportsTracker within your profile, because SportsTracker was one of the few services that allowed the creation of widgets that could in turn be placed on other websites, with some ease.
After we launched we did some research to find out what services or mechanisms people used to track their workouts and what we feared, came very much to light. The fact is that there simply isn't a clear market leader. Endomondo is popular.So is MapMyRun / Ride, Strata, etc etc. You name it, someone is using it - but not everyone. Some like to use dedicated devices, and some are happy with smartphone apps and there is no clear cut obvious winner that we should hang our hat on.
Accordingly we have had a rethink and we have decided on our next development step. We will continue to support SportsTracker because it is a particular favourite of ours (and the work has been done already), but what we are going to do is to build a dedicated mapping / tracking functionality within SportingCircles that will allow you to upload GPX files to your profile and share that across the service. The GPS files will be translated by the service and show your workout on a map, with timings and elevation. You will be able to share your workouts with others, and other will be able to comment on your rides.
Although this seems like it is replicating functionality from other services (SportsTracker, Endomondo etc) by standardising on GPX imports, this will allow pretty much anyone who tracks their workouts to share workouts and get more involved.
The majority of services we've mentioned above, and a whole vast variety that we simply don't have time to mention, all support the ability to export to GPX. Crucially, and in addition to smartphone apps, dedicated devices, almost in their entirety, support the GPX export functionality. The opportunity we can present is that we can help contextualise and start socialising workouts from all these different services and devices under one common Social Network, SportingCircles.
We hope you like our thinking. Watch this space. We are working hard to bring this to fruition in the near future.
