Both Engadget and Livewell 360 have recently reported on the Withings Connected Body Scale which tracks your body weight, body fat, and lean mass along with how many more pounds you have to go to reach your desired weight.
That’s awesome, and what’s great about it is that since it’s WiFi enabled it can send that data to a program on your iPhone so that you can do cool things with it.
The New News
Withings has now given the scale an ability to tweet your results, via Twitter, to all of your followers on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
I really like the concept of Social Health, but would you feel comfortable broadcasting the particulars of the space you occupy to everybody who follows you? Is this too much information for a general population?
I’m interested to get your take on this newly formed Twitter integration. Is this a good or bad thing, or do you even care about it? Let us know in the comments.
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DISCLAIMER ALERT: The ideas expressed in this post came out of my own head, were researched by my own eyes and were expressed by my own hands. They are not intended to serve as medical advice in any way, shape or form. And they do not reflect the views of Humana Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. I take full responsibility if you think this post is awesome or not awesome.
Recently a colleague complained to me that I’m not following him back on Twitter. Another one posted a comment to a Facebook application, offended that my wall was not accessible to her. And another one got annoyed when comments to my online status stayed unanswered for long periods of time, although there seemed to be plenty of activity on my profile.
Which made me think about the different uses people apply to their online social networks and tools – and their personal expectations.
In general, people don’t seem to realize, that most social technologies, including Twitter and Facebook, are asynchronous communication tools. That means, that they are meant to post information now that people pick up at a later point in time at their own discretion. Consequently, the builders of those tools have built in mechanisms and algorithms which – in an attempt to manage the communication load – often arbitrarily display the newest status updates, photos, news on the various ‘friends’ you follow; the newest ones first but in no particular order and without any particular ranking. Therefore, your profile may look active today when your updates are actually from a while ago. What makes matters worse is the fact, that your profile also displays replies, posts, comments by your friends – dependent on your preference settings. So, there may be recent activity on your profile although you haven’t logged in for weeks.
What we need to remember is that people use these tools in different ways, which is dependent on how they are able to access them throughout the day. For example, due to company security restrictions, I can only access most social media sites from my iPod touch during the day and from my home desktop at night. Consequently, I try to manage my Twitter stream by:
- only following people that talk about things of interest to me (which at this point does not include when they go to the shower or watch the sun rise) :)
- only posting information and links on Twitter that I find particularly intriguing from a professional and intellectual perspective
Consequently, I don’t prohibit anybody from following me but choose who to follow based on the above criteria. Unfortunately but not surprisingly, other people use Twitter in different ways which includes building an online reputation as connectors or distributors of any kind of information, measured by a ratio of followers to followees (called tweeciprocity on Twitter) or alike.
Sorry, guys, for virtually screwing up your cyber-reputation. I hope that the intellectual and informative value that my posts provide to you compensate for that. :)
But back to asynchronous communication tools, old-fashioned Email being one of them… They allow you to access and respond in a different-place/different-time manner and thus the expectation for somebody waiting for a response should adjust accordingly. Even though you may instantaneously see my post doesn’t create the need or ability for me to immediately respond; nor does it require me to respond at all. :)
In contrast, synchronous communication gives you instant feedback but requires you to also immediately respond. This direct feedback loop, however, helps to quickly overcome ambiguity, reach agreement, minimize time, and is, therefore, a much better way to arrive at mutual consent and to make decisions.
So, why not pick up the phone if you actually want to accomplish something?
Or, if the person you want to talk to is actually sitting in the cubicle across the aisle: Why not get up, walk over, and talk to him or her?
You might actually make a real friend …
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DISCLAIMER ALERT: The ideas expressed in this post came out of my own head, were researched by my own eyes and were expressed by my own hands. They are not intended to serve as medical advice in any way, shape or form. And they do not reflect the views of Humana Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. I take full responsibility if you think this post is awesome or not awesome.
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