[I] have been using ThinkUp since it was released to its early supporters back in January and I really like it. Unlike some tools which try to make your online activity into a popularity contest, ThinkUp provides insights that are fun and useful. As they say on their home page, “ThinkUp makes you feel good about the time you spend online.”

I’ll give you an example of one way that ThinkUp’s insights have already started to change my behavior. One of the insights I see from time-to-time looks like this:

I think my reaction the first time I saw this was “ouch!” But I gave it a lot of thought. I considered that the message here was that I should do a better job of sharing all kinds of things I find interesting on the Internet, not just stuff that relates to me. Slowly, I’ve started changing my behavior. The result, so far, has been that while I still see the “But enough about me” insights, they tend to look more like the one above. Note that phrase that I highlighted. Even though I doubt this will ever be down to zero–after all, I use social media to keep in touch with friends and colleagues, as well as spread the word about my posts–I think I’m doing a better job at making my tweets less self-centered¹.

And I have ThinkUp to thank for this.

It seems to me, this is and example of the very type of change that ThinkUp was attempting  to bring about with their insights: allowing users to take useful information (and hints!) from the insights and use them to improve the quality of their online social presence.