Help / FAQ / About / Why did you choose Twitter as the way to enter data?

First, it was important that users could work data logging into their daily routine, so I wanted to work it into something people were already doing. Twitter seemed perfect for this. People (millions of them) already tweet what they're doing. your.flowingdata simply takes the idea a little further.

Second, I didn't want to force people to come to a website every time they had to enter data. I knew that wouldn't work. You don't always have access to a computer, and if you have to wait a long time to enter data, you're probably going to forget. Twitter lets you tweet from wherever you can send text messages, PLUS it's on your computer. Multiple access points. I think that the more ways that you can enter data, the more likely you'll be able to keep at it.

Finally, Twitter's very open and easy-to-use API not only makes it easy for your.flowingdata to keep track of all your data, but also allows others to write scripts to tweet their data automatically.

With that being said, your.flowingdata will support other data sources eventually, but Twitter will remain the main data entrance because of its ubiquity.