Tweet success: Digital popularity creates power

London – Self-quantifiers – consumers who monitor their health, fitness and wellbeing using gadgets and measures – have been covered as a growing group on LS:N Global in the past year. Now, it seems, the impulse to self-regulate is extending to consumers’ digital health.

This month StinkDigital, a London-based production studio, introduced a prototype for a bracelet, similar to the Nike+ FuelBand, but this time measuring Twitter and other social media pick-up. Every time the wearer receives a Tweet or share, the bracelet accrues ‘fuel points’. The company has found a way to hook the bracelet to a motor which – dependent on how popular the user is – spins around several times.

The device is still a prototype, but demonstrates another way in which consumers are interested in monitoring every aspect of their lives. It’s also a novel way to convert viral popularity into a physical movement or action. Phone brand Orange has experimented with this in its Phone Fund project.