My house! My car! My blood pressure!
By Manuel P. Nappo, Program Director of the CAS in Social Media Management at HWZ and Chief Networking Officer at Centralway.
Sharing is caring, but sometimes I don't really care." This is certainly not news to anyone, but for me it's something that has recently caused my blood pressure readings to plummet. The reason for this is an acute lack of interest in running and walking in my timeline and comparing kilometers, calories and times.
Anyone who follows me on Twitter or is my friend on Facebook knows that I share like a world champion. I also like to share content about myself, where I am, what I'm listening to, what I'm watching and anything else. When I visit a bar, I check in on Foursquare. If I watch my favorite series "Friday Night Lights" again, my social web friends find out thanks to the GetGlue app. And every now and then, Sushi Toni from San Francisco ends up on Instagram. That satisfies the hunger. The hunger to make your condition known.
I don't want to know what comes after the empty plate. I don't want to know who eats it, when, where and how. Not my cheese - to stick with the culinary vocabulary. However, apps like Runkeeper, gadgets like the Nike Fuelband and the high-tech personal scales from Withings force me to do so.
It all started with Runkeeper in my timeline. I found out when one of my friends went jogging, which route he ran, how fast and how incredibly fit he was. Since then, it's been running, swimming and running up and down my timeline. Last entry: XY just completed a 1.49 km walk. I applaud. By the way, you can actually do that. There is live tracking where you can cheer on the athletes with a click.
Those who were struggling too much to breathe during the race have now moved on to the next battle: Nike Fuelband, a wristband that records your daily movements, displays them in Fuel points and compares them with friends on the social web. This actually seems to encourage some people to move more. A playful gadget that frustrates some and confirms to others that they are physically active. In other words, something that nobody really needs.
If you don't just want to share how fit you are, you can also share your health with others. The manufacturer Withings has both a personal scale and a blood pressure monitor with Wi-Fi on the market. The values are transferred directly to a PC, smartphone or tablet and can be shared with the whole world from there. From a medical point of view, the blood pressure monitor should certainly be of interest. So far, I haven't been able to find out my friends' current weight or blood pressure on the social web. I'm actually just waiting for rankings of the community's best blood pressure values to be published soon. I have now written around 3,000 characters, which corresponds to an insignificant calorie consumption. I'm about to hit the treadmill for an unknown number of kilometers. Anyone who wants to can drop by and cheer me on from the edge of the treadmill. I won't be squinting at my neighbor's display to compare myself with him. My blood pressure will inevitably rise, and the pointer on the bathroom scales will remain silent about what only he and I know.
