Fitbit shuts down some popular social features

Monday was the last day Fitbit owners could use a trio of the fitness tracker’s most popular social features. The wearables maker shut down fitness gamification features Fitbit Challenges and Adventures, as well as its Open Group social feature.

When Fitbit announced the planned removal of legacy features in February, the Google-owned company said the features had “limited use” and were being removed in an effort to improve and streamline the app.

Adventures Mode was an incentivized, gamified single-user challenge added in 2016 in which daily stages were overlaid on maps of actual trails in Yosemite National Park, allowing users to track their virtual progress as they walked. The Challenges feature allowed users to share their step count to motivate more activity among friends.

Removing features means earned trophies have also been removed.

While Open Groups — a feature that allowed anyone to request to join a group — is no longer available, Fitbit said users can still create closed groups or connect with other users on its Health & Wellness forums. -be.

Google’s $2.1 billion deal for Fitbit was announced in late 2019 and initially came under scrutiny from European Union officials over privacy concerns over Google’s data. data collected by Fitbit and how Google may use it. The acquisition was completed in 2021 after Google promised not to use health data for targeted ads.