Social Workout

Philanthropy

Treadmill for Dollars

Plus 3 Network

Check this out: Silicon Valley start-up Plus 3 Network has launched a site that allows you to connect your daily workout to a cause. Think Team in Training, i.e. where you get friends and family to pledge money for every mile you complete in some grueling marathon or triathlon. But skip the actual race part...um, and the friends and family part. With Plus 3 you select a cause from their list, and then one of the site's corporate sponsors donates money to that cause every timey you go for a jog, or swim, or ride your bike -- like even your standard two mile loop around the neighborhood. Bicycle component maker Ritchey, for example, has linked its donations to Project Rwanda. Other causes include the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, and even The Tech museum in San Jose.

For now, the system is entirely based on trust. Noone's checking whether you told the truth when you said you ran 12 miles at dawn. Plus 3 will actually pay your more, though, if you upload your workout data using a GPS-enabled gadget of some sort or another. (On this, somewhat unexpectedly, they invoke Ronald Reagan's mantra "Trust but verify.")  Apparently you can also get credit for workouts not measured in miles, like, say, yoga, simply by inputing the number of minutes you spent exercising.

You're skeptical. If these guys get any traction, you're thinking, they'll blow through their corporate sponsors' budgets in a hurry. It's a novelty, and the whole trust thing is impossibly sketchy. Fair enough on all counts, but the site is clearly a serious effort by reasonably experienced and deep-pocketed entrepreneurs, and here's why they might just have a shot at The Big Time....

Every day, at hundreds of thousands of gyms across the land, millions of people spend billions of minutes on treadmills and elliptical machines. Now, imagine what happens when people can actually log in to those machines, i.e. the machines identify the "user," and then could also (logically) upload his or her workout securely to the web....

Well, forget about Team in Training, suddenly you have Nation in Training. The fitness-philanthropy connection is both very strong and natural, and people will undoubtably jump at the opportunity to sign on -- with all their friends -- to fitness "challenges." Think "Ohio Treadmillers for Vaccines in Africa!"

Why would some heartless corporation feel the need to pay between $.003 and $.2 a mile to these sweaty, bleeding hearts? Because said coporation gets to push its brand deep into the psyche of those passionate sweaty millions for 45 intense minutes, three times a week. It's the ultimate in enlightened product placement.

Listen people, this "social workout" space is very soon to be booming. You heard it here first.

(Thanks very much to Laura K. for bringing Plus 3 to our attention!)