Cody for iPhone makes fitness as fun and easy as Facebook sharing

If people spent as much time working out as they did on Facebook, let’s just say there would be nary a muffin top or belly bulge in sight.

But this doesn’t mean that social can’t help fitness. The Cody app launched today, taking the compelling aspects of social networking and applying it to exercise.

Cody Inc., the app’s makers, call it a “virtual fitness coach.” Its target audience is the casual exerciser, not hardcore fitness fanatic. The app serves as a digital workout partner to help you keep your motivation and have fun doing it. During an interview with VentureBeat, co-founder Pejman Pour-Moezzi said plenty of fitness apps are out there, and Cody is different because it focuses on the social element, rather than on data such as heart rate or calories burned.

“What we observed that this focus on metrics has gone so far that I think it ends up intimidating a lot of people,” he said. “The social aspect of fitness is what fascinated us — how much motivation, or how compelling fitness gets when you have a workout buddy. It’s a social-first fitness app, so it’s all about connecting and sharing with other people.”

Pour-Moezzi and his cofounder, Paul Javid, formerly worked as product managers at Microsoft and left to create a product to help people achieve their goals. The obvious application was fitness, and they wanted fitness with Cody to feel like sharing a photo on Instagram or posting a Facebook update. The app is highly visual, making it easy to discover, share, and discuss content about health and exercise. Cody will also bring up relevant information based on stated fitness goals. Over time, Pour-Moezzi and Javid hope to integrate location service; for instance, someone wanting to find a kickboxing gym could look at community reviews to find a place that suits their needs.

Cody is free Apple App Store, and the founders aren’t focusing on monetization. Right now, they want to expand adoption and engagement for the app and are considering premium features, such as in-app purchases of yoga videos down the road.