Brian Stetler: When Weight Loss Goes Social, A Job Has Been Done

Brian Stetler, the NYTimes journalist who made his name by covering the Arab Spring via Twitter, lost 90 pounds by tweeting about the food he ate.

This confirms two suspicions — losing weight is not about a special diet or a special technique. Weight and body image is an almost entirely social construct that depends on how we think others see us.  The other thing it confirms for me is that people hire social media to get jobs done that are at first blush antithetical to our perception of social media as a mere broadcast channel for our thoughts and the media we consume.

Social media, as Whitney Johnson eludes to in her examination of how we hire social media, is only a tool because of “how” we use it. It is nothing on its own. You can find that article at our Jobs-to-be-Done Quora board.