For most people, weight is a private issue. That looks like it could be a thing of the past for anyone who gets a WiFi Body Scale that has come to the market. It is set up to auto tweet, or auto post to Facebook each time you step on it. Is this designed to keep people accountable, or just plain stupid?
This scale is retailing for just under $150 by a company called Withings. Previous versions of this scale allowed you to track your weight and other data such as heart rate and body fat percentage from your Apple Iphone. I guess they needed to take it a step further and allow you to auto tweet or facebook your weight for the world to see.
See it at retail price here.
If this is something of appeal to you, you will be able to set up your Twitter account to auto post on each weigh in, daily, weekly, or monthly depending on what you feel would be most “beneficial” to your followers. The scale will show your weight, your fat and lean mass, and BMI (body mass index), which you can see on the iphone app, or on twitter for millions of people to see. While it is a great scale, it did not make our most accurate scale list.
When you enable this auto tweet feature, the tweets that will go out will display what you weight currently and how many pounds you are away from your goal weight. If you do buy one of these scales, it can track up to 8 people each month so if you have a contest with friends or family and want to broadcast their stats, this is possible. Let the world be your judge and hold you truly accountable (they say that broadcasting your goals makes you less likely to hit them).
Do you see the appeal here? I sure do not. Sounds humiliating to people trying to better themselves. If you can think of a reason for this feature, please let me know in the comments.
Here is a quick video i found that displays how this scale works through an online dashboard to track your progress.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HD_Fk5qphfQ
I own one… doesn’t have to post to social media… i’ve got all of that turned off.