This is a guest post by Kate Willer.

There are an estimated 517 million Twitter accounts as of 1 July 2012 (with 140 million being active), with numerous online businesses seeing it as a golden opportunity to increase revenue and visibility. However, Twitter is still ostensibly a network for socialising with neat tools and apps added on an almost daily basis. It is possible to spend hours on Twitter each day without ‘tweeting’ a single word as you read interesting content from other users. Now, it is possible to turn Twitter into a tool for tracking your life thanks to a new application, Your Flowing Data. This is an app that enables you to collect information about yourself. To begin, all you need to do is follow @yfd on Twitter, sign in and start recording data.

Reveal Hidden Secrets
Your Flowing Data was built to help track your daily habits and uncover behavioural patterns that you may be unaware of. After all, people in modern society seem to be extremely observant when it comes to the conduct of others while being blissfully unaware of our own quirks. One way this could work out well for users would be with health. With the help of Your Flowing Data, you could see habits that are potentially harmful to your health, such as eating too much sugar or consuming caffeine in the afternoon which may help explain the difficulties you have sleeping.

Here are the core features of Your Flowing Data:

• Collect Data From Anywhere: You can record data from anywhere on Twitter once you have an account. Feel free to add any data you wish, just not too personal!
• Data Interaction: Take a closer look at the data you enter and use the data visualisation option to learn more about yourself.
• Customise Data: Much of what you enter may be irrelevant. You can create pages that only contain the data which you are most interested in.
• Share: You can keep as much data as you like private and share the more innocuous tidbits of your life. Remember, the less private information you display, the better. Your Flowing Data is for your own personal use and should not be used to allow hundreds of millions of people to know more about your bathroom habits!
• Gain Understanding Of Yourself: Use the data and visualisation pages to see growth and progress. This is an excellent way of showing if you have regressed into old habits or have finally cleaned up your act.
• Easy Exploration: The data is easy to record and understand.

Pros
The advantages of Your Flowing Data are pretty obvious. You can add pretty much any data you like and begin tracking your own life. The initial idea was to track people’s weight and sleep patterns. Certainly, tracking your sleep patterns and weight is still an excellent way to grow into Your Flowing Data. After all, two of the biggest problems in modern day society are lack of sleep and obesity. When it comes to sleeping problems, you can monitor your sleep every night and take a look at your behavioural patterns during the day. It is entirely possible that you will begin to spot links between daily behaviour and poor sleep.

You can also begin to track what you eat per day, your weight and the amount of exercise you do. A large percentage of people who are overweight completely underestimate the amount of calories they consume. In some cases, they are wrong by 50%! You can also expand this data by including TV shows watched, hours spent working outside the office, blood pressure, heart rate, feelings/emotions, and even toilet breaks. The potential is there to make Your Flowing Data the most comprehensive personal diary you have ever kept.

Cons
There is an element of Big Brother about Your Flowing Data. It is, of course, entirely up to you to decide what data is released into the public domain. If you have a propensity to reveal too much information about yourself to others in general, you may want to steer clear of Your Flowing Data, lest you continually alert others to the fact you have bowel obstruction issues. There is a lot to be said for keeping everything private on Your Flowing Data and using it solely to rid yourself of certain habits. Also, it can be a time-consuming process and if you fall behind on your data input, it will be hard to get a clear picture of your habits.

If you have the time to use it, are into self-improvement and keen on statistics, Your Flowing Data is a fun Twitter application. It is worth trying out just to see if you have some potentially unhealthy or harmful habits. You might well be surprised and shocked at what you find.

 
Image courtesy Fast Company.

This post is written by Kate Willer. I like social networks, Google android, malwareguide.net and psychology. I’m interested in IT services, computer upgrades, computer repair, different computer apps. Love travelling and skiing.