MyFitnessPalScaling health applications to 50 million users

What do we do?

Fun and exciting facts

• 50+ million registered users

• Over 150 million pounds lost

• #1 App in Health & Fitness categories

What’s more challenging about a health app?

• Timescale of user feedback

• Privacy implications

• Difficulty of the task at hand

• New terrain for behavioral change

React quickly to users

• Accept what you don’t know

• Place lots of small bets

• Hypothesis -> Experiment -> Conclusion

Release Often

• Establish a release cadence

• Track internal deadlines

• Beta test changes

A/B Testing

• Track each feature independently

• Integrate A/B testing from day 1

• Gradual rollout of features

Simplify your releases

• Timebox development/product decisions

• Automate releases

• Stub out features to minimize costs

Invest in infrastructure

• Move fast and break stuff => Move fast with stable infrastructure

• Services accelerate product development

Understand your users

• Focus Groups

• User Studies

• Analytics

Scale has one big advantage

• Value of health data in quantity

• Untapped areas of data

• More data > complex algorithms

MyFitnessPal Data

• 11 Billion Food entries

• 4 million public food items

• 70K recipes added/day

MyFitnessPal Data Projects

• Food categorization

• Recipe Parsing

• Effects of food on weight loss

Focus on your goals

• Helping users get healthy

• WAU/DAU/MAU are secondary metrics