Friendless in Fitbitland

A couple of months ago, I upgraded from a perfectly fine pedometer to Fitbit, which can track not only steps but also (it says) the quality of your sleep, synching it all to your Fitbit log. It works as advertised, but I've been letting it slide lately, with all the holiday distractions.

Could be the normal post-honeymoon crash, of course. Self-improvement plans can be fascinating for a few days -- me, it's all about me! -- but they tend to lose their luster as the real world comes back into focus. In this case, though, I think Fitbit's web folks have to share the blame. Whenever I log on to my "dashboard," I see this annoying personal message in the right margin of the page:

 Friends make Fitbit more fun

You don't have any friends yet.

Find friends. [link] 

"You don't have any friends." Seriously. I would understand (maybe) if Facebook nagged like this -- FB is all about friends, and I barely check in often enough to qualify as a lurker. But Fitbit's job is to help me keep moving, not prod me to bore my friends (yes, they exist) with daily exercise stats. 

No doubt there are crowds of Fitbit friends out there, spurring each other to ever higher mileage totals, and if it works for them, who could object? But Fitbit, it's bad manners and bad business to insult customers who prefer not to share. You don't want to be remembered as the guys who put the "bitter" in Fitbitter.