Whoop Launches ‘Humans’ Social Network Built on Wearable Data
Fitness wearable maker Whoop has added a social network to its app, saying every account is tied to a real person with a verified heartbeat.
Whoop, the Boston-based maker of screenless fitness bands, has launched a social network inside its app that it says only real people can join. The feature, called Whoop Humans, went live on Nov. 12. It lets members follow friends and family, share health and workout data recorded by their wearables, and react to one another’s progress. The company is pitching it as an alternative to mainstream platforms that it says are filling up with bots and AI-generated content.
“Every account represents a real person with a verified heartbeat,” Will Ahmed, Whoop’s founder and chief executive, said, according to Entrepreneur. In the company’s announcement, distributed through Business Wire, he called it “the most verifiably human network ever launched.”
What the feature does
Whoop sells its band as part of an annual membership that costs between $199 and $359, Entrepreneur reported. The new network sits on top of data the band already collects. According to the company’s press release, members can share:
- Sleep, Recovery and Strain scores, Whoop’s own measures of rest, readiness and physical effort
- Heart rate variability (HRV), a measure of how heartbeat timing changes that is often used as a sign of stress and recovery, along with resting heart rate
- Workouts, activities and achievements
- “Moments,” which are photos from workouts and personal milestones that can also be kept private
Taking part is optional. Whoop said members choose which metrics and workout types appear, can remove followers, and can switch on a “Stealth Mode” that hides their data for a while without changing their settings. Sensitive activities are not shared by default, and the company said it does not sell or monetize members’ personal health data. Whoop Teams, the app’s existing group feature, will stay. The company said 57% of members belong to at least one team.
Entrepreneur reported that the network is also meant to let members encourage each other and check in when someone’s numbers look worrying. “It gives us another way to look out for each other,” Mika Bublitz, a Whoop member, said in the company’s release.
Why it matters
The launch comes as Whoop grows quickly. The company says it has more than 3 million members worldwide who open the app more than eight times a day on average. It has raised more than $900 million in venture capital and ships to 61 countries. Ahmed has said it took about 12 years to reach 1 million members, roughly 18 months to reach 2 million and about six months to reach 3 million, Entrepreneur reported. He expects about 4 million by the end of the year.
A social layer could give subscribers another reason to keep paying. That matters because competition is heating up. Entrepreneur noted that Google released the Fitbit Air, a $100 screenless wearable, earlier this year, and that Apple is reportedly working on a similar device. Gadget Review compared Whoop Humans with Strava, the fitness-tracking app that has long linked runners and cyclists through shared activity data. TechRadar made the same comparison, according to Gadget Review.
Questions about the ‘human’ claim
Some coverage pointed out the limits of Whoop’s pitch. Gadget Review said the band only confirms that the physiological data was recorded by a Whoop device. Photos, captions and the context members add are still ordinary user-generated content that the company does not independently verify.
The outlet also raised privacy concerns. Even with detailed controls, it said, sleep patterns, recovery trends and resting heart rate can reveal a lot about a person’s health and lifestyle to casual acquaintances. It also questioned how widely the feature will catch on. Committed athletes and data-minded users may enjoy it, but casual members may not want to check a friend’s Strain score every day. Whoop has not released any adoption or retention figures for the feature.
Whoop has backed its products with its own research. Entrepreneur pointed to a company-published study in the journal Sensors that followed nearly 12,000 members for 12 weeks. It found that people who wore the band daily logged more than 90 extra minutes of exercise a week and about 20 extra minutes of sleep a night. The press release put the sleep gain at more than two extra hours, without saying over what period. These findings come from the company and have not been independently confirmed.
What comes next
Whoop Humans is available in the Whoop app now. The company’s announcement did not say whether every member, platform and country gets it at once. How many of Whoop’s members start following each other will show whether a feed of heart rates and sleep scores can grow beyond a niche of fitness enthusiasts, at a time when much of social media is struggling to prove its users are real.
