Habitbot: A Twitter-based Tool to Help Form and Maintain Habits and Goals

Katrina Panovich MIT CSAIL Cambridge, MA 02139 [email protected] Abstract Many people set goals, like running daily or writing some amount each day. In this paper, we present a novel tool for supporting daily goals: Habitbot. Habitbot is a Twitter-based tool designed to support habit formation and maintenance. Habitbot uses Twitter as a social support system, as well as a tool for peer pressure. It takes advantage of social norms within Twitter to instrument it as a tool for habit formation. Users give the system a goal and are punished or rewarded by sending tweets from their account on their behalf.