Peloton awarded new patent on ‘Coordinating workouts across remote exercise machines’

In late January, Peloton was awarded a new patent by the US patent office (Patent #10,898,760) for “Coordinating workouts across remote exercise machines.”

First spotted by @bobtreemore on Twitter:

Peloton beta tested a “Sessions” feature last year where on-demand classes would start every few minutes so the leaderboard would be synced together. The feature was removed with a promise it would be retooled and brought back.

Looking at this patent, Peloton has a lot of ways to innovate around on-demand classes for friends. I could see options to schedule an on-demand class with a private leaderboard for friends and particular hashtags. It would also be possible for Peloton to use this functionality to allow fundraisers to be coordinated offline and then implemented through the Peloton UI.

Peloton’s friend functionality is pretty basic at this point, and there’s a lot of room for improvement. In the future, one could envision a way to “invite” friends to join you for a live class or an on-demand class through the Peloton app, and then notifications would be sent to all involved.

I’d love to see a “fitness feed” in the Peloton iOS app and on the Bike/Tread where it would show me the recent workouts from my friends, badges they’ve earned, and recent PRs they’ve set.

What do you make of this new Peloton patent? Does Peloton need to implement some of these features to help increase engagement among friends?