Are wearable fitness trackers really a game-changing phenomenon? Or are they just the latest in a long line of gimmicks designed to snag money from the wallets of people who really want to get in shape but never seem to?
I’ve been of the mind that an awful lot of the devices will be sitting with the Shake Weight on the treadmill-cum-clothesline in the study. But I’m starting to change my tune.
I’ll submit that my position may be colored at least in part by the wearables hangover I’ve been nursing since CES last month. The manic rush to strap sensors onto body parts and embed them into other connected devices at times felt more like parody than plan. It reminded me of the days before the dot com bubble burst – on a much smaller scale, of course – when all you needed was a PowerPoint deck and a sock puppet to secure enough funding to run Super Bowl ads.
By the time I flew out of Vegas, I’d coined a new acronym: IoC, or Internet of Crap.
No doubt, there is an awful lot of IoC out there. But it’s not all IoC. There are Amazon.com’s out there with the Pet.com’s of the wearables era.
So which is Fitbit? Read my entire column HERE.
