Who Killed My Fitness Pal?

mikejody787

I was a member of My Fitness Pal years ago, and it was one of the most active, instructive, encouraging, accountability helpers around! There was always a lot of activity on my "Feed", a lot of interaction, much instruction coming from senior successful weight losers, and all around a general feel of "we're all in this together, let's help each other".

Now? There's literally a handful of people posting on some message boards. Maybe 12 or so. It seems literally dead! So the question is, who killed My Fitness Pal? And why?

pony4us

For me it is just as valuable as it was before. I don't do the social friends thing, as a matter of fact I changed my account to get rid of the news feed clutter from "friends" made about ten years ago. I welcomed not having newsfeed tell me I logged in or exercised, I logged it, I already know. I do read the forums for entertainment value. So while I understand some people liked the social factor, for me it is a tool for logging and tracking so the less noise the better.

Lietchi

Well, killing the newsfeed was an act of MFP itself, that certainly didn't help.
But the boards have been getting calmer and calmer gradually the last few years.

Not sure if anyone really 'killed' the boards. They were revamped visually a number of years ago, the disagree button was also retired. Not sure if that contributed, but I also think that boards/ forums have become less popular in general?
Also, boards generally can tend to have a life cycle, I've been on several that just evolved and died out without any particular cause.

KareninCanada

Removing the newsfeed definitely had an impact on the user base - my friends list has dropped by half starting the end of June and it's still dropping. A ton of people left and went to LoseIt.

I've tried to kindle an interest in the forums, and be encouraging to people, but overall it's become pretty dead here. The logging app is still fine but the owners killed the "Pal" aspect. It's just "MyFitnessDiary" now.

michaela4910

MFP killed it when they took away the newsfeed.

mikejody787

Does MFP know MFP killed their business when they took away the newsfeed?

LiveOnceBeHappy

I browse these boards, but Facebook is where it’s at. Search Lose Weight Eat Pizza. Much more active and user-friendly. No spam or sales allowed. Well-monitored.

SurferGirl1982

I agree with @pony4us. It was annoying having to read everyday that your friends and their friends logged in for so many days in a row or that they completed their food diary for the day. MFP had the automatic updates set (at default) to post those things.

I think a lot of people didn't realize that they could go in to settings and decide what things they wanted automatically posted. I had mine set not to post how many days in a row I had logged in or that I had completed my diary for the day. But I had my food diary set to "public". So if someone was interested at looking at my diary, they could go to my profile and look.

If MFP didn't have the "automatic" updates, I think it would have been much nicer. Someone could manually post that they had logged in for 90 days. Or, that they hadn't any drinks or ate any dessert for the week.

DKCrewMama

I too used to be on MFP several years ago.I’ve been trying to figure out what was so different this time around. I still like it but it’s lost “We are in this together.” I even had a few friends that if we didn’t log in after a few days that we would check in on each other.

ridiculous59

I've been on here since 2013 and definitely saw a decline in posts long before they took away the newsfeed. To be honest, I found the newsfeed annoying with all its ads and other info that I didn't need to see. I much prefer the way it is today with the blog format. I now notice that many of the discussion posts are saying much the same..... people complaining that they're not losing, they're unmotivated, etc, etc. But we all come here with different expectations: I didn't want anyone to hold my hand. I wanted to be inspired, and then hopefully inspire someone else as my journey progressed. At some point the discussion categories were shuffled and maybe became too focussed, forcing people to jump around if they wanted to see a variety of posts? I honestly don't know....

mandylanerocks

I joined my MFP in 2011 and really started using it as a tool towards the end of that year.
This was before there was an APP and I loved it. I enjoyed some of the social aspects because it was encouraging to me
I wasn't sharing my weight loss journey on Facebook or anything so it was nice to have that community of friends and "we are all in this together".
MyFitnessPal killed itself (in my opinion) when it sold to Under Armor and it started changing things. And then even more so when Francisco Partners bought it and then took away the free barcode scanner.
Now the newsfeed. I know some people don't like the news feed and I totally do get it but it was a nice easy way to check in with your fitness friends.
It's definitely not My Fitness PAL anymore. It's My Fitness Dairy as said:

KareninCanada wrote: »

... The logging app is still fine but the owners killed the "Pal" aspect. It's just "MyFitnessDiary" now.

ridiculous59

The barcode scanning is still free for Canadian non-premium members. Weird.

KareninCanada

It is, but it's not always reliable. Probably half the time it brings up thr wrong item or a different version of it with incorrect data.

Lietchi

ridiculous59 wrote: »

The barcode scanning is still free for Canadian non-premium members. Weird.

Belgium too. I suspect they made it a paying feature specifically in the US? I know I wouldn't pay for the barcode scanner for my country, many products give zero results or wrong ones (sometimes very wrong, entirely different food).

christianteach

I agree. I don’t even know how many years I’ve used MFP, long before UA took over and made some poor changes. I miss the news feed and the social aspect. I am a premium member that won’t be renewing when my subscription expires. I can’t help but wonder why I’m still getting a lot of friend requests. That aspect of this app was killed with this change.

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COGypsy

christianteach wrote: »

I agree. I don’t even know how many years I’ve used MFP, long before UA took over and made some poor changes. I miss the news feed and the social aspect. I am a premium member that won’t be renewing when my subscription expires. I can’t help but wonder why I’m still getting a lot of friend requests. That aspect of this app was killed with this change.

I think it's two things. One, the Introduce Yourself board still has pinned posts about how to add friends and a place to comment if you want more friends. I'm sure that makes true newbies think friends are a thing. It also seems like there are a lot of people that come back to MFP after being away for awhile and they remember the options that used to be available.

KareninCanada

Also the scammers are still just as active with sending out friend requests in order to send messages.

JessiBelleW

I think too as social media took over fb and reddit people found groups of other social folk there were groups they could join on the thing they were already on. People are inherently lazy (not in a nasty way) and things that are easy or convenient get used most