Getting to Know You

Weighing In, Online

EDiets is one of a handful of subscription-based Internet pure-playsto have survived the shakeout and achieved a profit. The dotcompersonalizes diet plans to overcome its biggest handicapnot having theface-to-face weigh-ins that programs like Weight Watchers and JennyCraig offer. With eDiets, members weigh themselves in their homes andtrack their progress on the site. To compensate for not havingregional weight loss centers, eDiets has to customize its weight lossplans to such an extent that they appeal to people who have growntired of Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig's cookie-cutterapproach.

Every month, as many as 40,000 people sign up for eDiets' freenewsletter, according to Steve Johnson, the company's CTO. And eachquarter, approximately 100,000 new dieters pay $45 for a three-monthsubscription to the program. The subscription entitles members toweekly fitness and meal plans customized according to their eatinghabits, dietary preferences, medical conditions, and emotional andweight loss needs. The Deerfield Beach, Fla.-based company has morethan 300,000 paying members and 9.8 million opt-in subscribers to itsnewsletter.

Before the company went online, Johnson worked with professional,licensed dieticians to build eDiets' proprietary diet engine fromscratch. The diet engine, which runs on Windows NT, relies on acustomer database and a meal plan database connected via software. Thesoftware extracts information from each database to produce thecustomized diet plan for each member.

When a new customer registers on eDiets, she fills out aquestionnaire, indicating her current age, weight, height and gender.Then, selecting from pull-down menus, she specifies whether she hasany dietary preferences or restrictionssuch as being a vegetarianandindicates if she has any medical conditions, such as high bloodpressure, hypertension, diabetes and high cholesterol. Finally, sheindicates whether she's a couch potato, exercises moderately or isvery active, and if she eats when she's stressed, depressed or upset.She submits the questionnaire to eDiets, and it gets stored in thecustomer database.