Digitized wellness is en vogue these days, and companies from Weight Watchers to Under Armour are eager to claim a bigger revenue share of a white-hot trend. There's just one problem - digital-first developers have created products like Noom, the New York City-based wellness app that's out to dethrone legacy diet players. But Noom's product line goes beyond that, and into healthcare, allowing users to better manage conditions like diabetes - and ideally, shift American healthcare and obesity trends.
The ability to generate buzz on social media is key to any brand's longevity these days; Noom was founded by Saeje Jeong and Artem Petakov more than a decade ago, and attracted $114 million in funding from Silicon Valley investors like Sequoia Capital. It has also been able to attract more attention - Noom's Facebook ($FB) Talking About Count, pictured above, tracks an increase in how many social mentions the app has picked up in recent years.
Attention is nice; engagement is crucial. Noom's Apple ($AAPL) Store Ratings Count has grown at a hockey-stick trajectory, to more than 136,000 reviews - signaling an expansion of its user base. The downside is that a legacy competitor's product, Under Armour's My Fitness Pal, has racked up roughly 10x the amount of engagement by this metric. The upside is, that for Noom, its rating tally in the Google Play store has grown to an even greater number than their Apple count.
Let's see for how long Under Armour (or, anyone) has the upper hand. Noom's LinkedIn ($MSFT) Employee Headcount shows growth of more than 77%. With its big round of funding in 2019 the company said it would expand its product team - so expect Noom to launch new digital tools as well.
About the Data:
Thinknum tracks companies using the information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales.
Further Reading:
- Weight Watchers' wellness transition comes with a digital twist
- This chart illustrates Tesla's 2019 rebound - and now shares are popping
- Don't sleep on Casper - it could break 2019's short-lived IPO curse