Aaron Toponce

Well, this is an exciting time for me right now. introPLAY, the startup company that I just hired on with, has officially released their product, the newest, and in my opinion, best sports and fitness site on the web.

What is introPLAY?

introPLAY is an exercise tracking site. With introPLAY, you enter your workout from any of 89 different activities, ranging from aerobics to yoga, bicycling to whitewater rafting, cross country skiing to tai chi. As you enter your workouts, data is tracked and stored in our database for your complete analysis. This is better than anything you have used before, and it's only going to get better as we begin to release more and more features. But, the crux of introPLAY isn't just tracking your personal workouts, as much as it is competing with friends and family in an introLEAGUE.

What in an introLEAGUE?

You're familiar with the NBA, NFL and MLB. An introLEAGUE is similar. Just as the NBA is made up of a number of teams, and each team is made up of a number of players, an introLEAGUE is the same, made up with teams that are made up of players. And, just like the NBA, those teams in that introLEAGUE are competing for the top spot. However, unlike the NBA, you as a member of the team, are also competing against members of your team to claim that coveted #1 position. All of this competing is done through your workouts. Each workout activity you enter is awarded points, based on the activity itself, it's duration and it's intensity. The more points you are awarded, the higher you climb the ladder in the team and league rankings. And it's easy to start an introLEAGUE. Anyone can start one at anytime, and of course, you can be a member of several introLEAGUES.

Is my data shared with others?

First off, we value very strongly the security of our users. You will notice, that the entire time you are navigating the site, everything is done securely. We recognize that your privacy in crucial and private, especially in a site such as this. There is some data that is public to other registered users of the site, such as the introPOINTS that you have scored, the intensities and durations of your workouts, and some data of your profile. However, your weight, body fat, and other daily vitals are not shared with others. Notes or journal entries that you mark as private are also not shared. This is personal information to you, so rest assured that when you enter that data, you're the only one who can see it. Lastly, your information is never shared or sold to 3rd parties outside of introPLAY. All data is stored, and stays stored, internally. Further inquiry can be found in our privacy policy.

Is the site free?

Yes! You would not benefit from much, if we forced our users to pay a fee to use the site. Our site is free, because we recognize that not many people have the motivation to workout, and hold to all those New Year Resolutions of losing weight. We hope that the competition nature of the site will be motivation enough to get you out to the gym to lose that gut or butt that you've been meaning to lose the past 5 years. How will we make money then, if we are not charging our users? Well, in a nutshell, we will be advertising and licensing to interested parties. We will have unique vendor/client subscriptions. All in all, there is plenty of room for us to make money without forcing a fee on our users. Will there be features in the future that are pay-based? Possibly, but at the moment, the site is wide open, so have at it. All the features you currently have in front of you will always be there for you, free of charge.

Check out the rulebook for more information.

Ok. So, you might like the sound of this. Competitive exercise, with tons of data analysis. You're probably thinking to yourself- how does is work? Well, let me run through an example to get it visualized in your head. Say you work on a corporate floor. There's an accounting department, a marketing department, sales, retail, human resources, etc. Say the company you work for is John's Retail. So, you decide to setup a John's Retail introLEAGUE. Then, within that league, you setup all the necessary teams. A marketing team, retail team, HR team, etc. Because you are setting up the introLEAGUE, you are the chairperson, and as such, start setting up the players on those teams. To do so, you use our invitation system, that sends those people an email to join introPLAY and join your introLEAGUE. You also set a start date and end date for the league. 30 days seems to be the average, but you can set the duration for as long as you want. Once all your players are invited, and assigned their appropriate teams, then the fun begins when the league starts.

So, as you can see, introPLAY has the social networking built in, that is all the buzz today, but it's designed with those who you already know. It's not like other social networking sites where you can browse profiles, and ask to be friends. Rather, you have to do the invitation for friendships via email to those who you already know. And no, if they haven't been in a league or team with you, then their profile and entire account is hidden from your view. So basically, what I'm trying to say, is introPLAY has social networking done right.

Now that you know what introPLAY is all about, think of it- you can track and analyze your workouts in great detail. Soon, you will be able to track every mile ran, every weight rep, every lap in the pool, every point scored. Then, analyze those stats of your workouts like nothing you've ever done or seen before- look at you workout history, compare yourself against your friends and the site or dive into notes and journals as you worked out. The possibilities are endless.

This is just the beginning. As such, even though we have released, we're calling this a beta release as there is just so much more to add and so many more features to implement. So, if you sign up and start working out, we just ask that you keep this in mind, and report any problems, bugs etc. using the contact form located at the bottom of the page, or emailing us directly. Of course, we'll take feature requests too. We want introPLAY to be the best experience for our users, and we just can't do that without the feedback from our community.

So, join now, start working out, and enjoy introPLAY!