A Study on Twitter Usage for Fitness Self-Reporting via Mobile Apps

The purpose of this study was to research the new emerging technology of mobile health, the use of mobile fitness apps to share one’s workout with their Twitter social network, the workout tweets and the individualities of the Tweeters. 70,748 tweets from mobile fitness application Endomondo were processed using an online tweet collection application and a customized JavaScript to determine aspects of the shared workouts and the demographics of those that share. The data shows that by tracking mobile fitness app hashtags, a wealth of information can be gathered to include but not limited to exercise frequency, daily use patterns, location based workouts and language characteristics. While a majority of these tweets are to share a specific workout with their Twitter social networking, the data would suggest other reasons for sharing as well.