Understand Your Behaviors with Twitter – Testers Needed

Posted by Nathan on Dec 3, 2008 to Featured, Projects, Self-surveillance / 103 comments

Understand Your Behaviors with Twitter – Testers Needed

I started tracking what I eat and my weight using Twitter in an effort to shed 10 pounds and consume less. It's already been (a really fast) two months since I started this experiment — I've lost 7 pounds so far. While there are a number of factors that can contribute to weight loss (and gain), I think the simple act of tweeting raised my awareness just enough to make me feel guilty for eating that bag of chips in the middle of the afternoon.

I Need Your Help

So I got enough positive response to keep going with this idea. I expanded my application so that anyone with a Twitter account can monitor his or her weight and eating habits. I also added two more services — sleep (above) and mood (below).

I'm not quite ready to open it up to everyone just yet. You all will be the first to know though. In the meantime, I need some people to test the application under the following non-daunting conditions:

  • You have a Twitter account and actually know how to use it
  • After two weeks of use, I can email you a few questions about what works and what doesn't

Ideally you'd want to lose some weight, change your sleeping habits, or are interested in your emotions. It's sorta useless otherwise. Well, I guess pure curiosity could be another reason. Anyways, if you'd like to test it out, let me know in the comments. Leave your Twitter username and use a valid email address so that I can send you the info to get started.

UPDATE: This isn't an app that processes your Twitter feed. Rather, you send direct messages to a bot and the app does the rest of the work - a similar process you might have seen on services like mycrocosm, Daytum, or FoodFeed.

Subscribe to the RSS feed to stay updated on what's new in data visualization. All the cool people are doing it.

Like this post?

Subscribe to the RSS feed, follow on Twitter, fan on Facebook, or share with friends and colleagues.

Comments (Add Yours)