Monday, February 02, 2009
If you are not familiar with Twitter, it is an increasingly popular Internet service that millions of people use to send short (140 character or less) messages to other Twitter users who share similar interests. A Twitter messeage is called a Tweet.
With millions of users sending over a hundred million tweets each month, altMD was interested in learning more about how people were using Twitter to discuss health and wellness topics and how we might be able to help promote health and wellness through Twitter.
I asked our technology team to develop an application that would allow us to read and categorize all of the tweets that contained any of a few hundred target keywords such as acupuncture, massage, meditation, yoga, herbal medicine, reiki, etc. Fortunately, Twitter provides an API (application programming interface) that makes it easy for developers to build such applications.
For the past several weeks, altMD has been reading and categorizing tweets every 15 minutes, day and night. During that time, we have identified nearly 100,000 tweets that match one or more of our target keywords- about 3,000 per day.
Note: while we do not search for every single possible keyword, abbreviation, misspelling, etc, we search for hundreds of the most common keywords that make tweets easily identifiable for both computers and human searches.
Each week, we compile a report that tells us which keywords are tweeted the most, which Twitter users are tweeting about those keywords the most and many other interesting trends that help us better understand how wellness-minded people are using Twitter. To regognize and encourage people to promote wellness on Twitter, we have been sending acknowledgments to top wellness tweeters and sharing some of our statistics with the Tiwtter community.
In the next several weeks, we will publish all of our Twitter statistcs on altMD in real-time so everyone can get extreemly detailed information about who is tweeting about wellness and what they are tweeting about. We are even going to provide direct access to all of those tweets, organized by keyword, so everyone can see all the recent tweets related to acupuncute or EFT, for example. We'll be sharing more information about that shortly...
Below is a snapshot of the number of tweets by keyword for the week of 1/25/08 through 1/31/08.
| Keyword |
# Tweets
1/25 - 1/31 |
| Yoga |
7148 |
| Massage & Bodywork |
3568 |
| Meditation |
1285 |
| Pilates |
1144 |
| Chiropractic |
732 |
Herbal Medicine
|
680 |
| Emotional Freedom Techniques |
623 |
| Acupuncture |
622 |
| Reiki |
533 |
| Physical Therapy |
348 |
| Astrology |
334 |
| Feng Shui |
298 |
| Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) |
283 |
| Midwifery |
236 |
| Tai Chi Chuan |
226 |
| Aromatherapy |
214 |
| Ayurvedic Medicine |
159 |
| Chakra Balancing |
139 |
| Bioidentical Hormone Therapy |
111 |
| Homeopathy |
83 |
| Occupational Therapy |
71 |
| Psychotherapy |
65 |
| Reflexology |
65 |
| Cupping |
61 |
| Hypnotherapy |
58 |
| Colonic Hydrotherapy/Irrigation |
46 |
| Alexander Technique |
39 |
| Music Therapy |
36 |
| Biofeedback |
29 |
| Qi Gong |
29 |
| Ashrams |
28 |
| Kinesiology |
22 |
| Acupressure |
22 |
| Audiology |
18 |
| Hydrotherapy |
18 |
| Rolfing & Structural Integration |
14 |
| Integrative Medicine |
12 |
| Oxygen Therapy |
11 |
| Myofascial Release |
10 |
| Ear Candling |
9 |
| Speech Pathology |
7 |
| Osteopathy |
7 |
| Breathwork |
6 |
| Naturopathy |
6 |
| Craniosacral Therapy |
5 |
| Energy Medicine |
5 |
| Laser Therapy |
4 |
| Guided Imagery Meditation |
4 |
| Iridology |
3 |
| Hand Therapy |
1 |
| Crystal Healing |
0 |
| Rapid Eye Technology (RET) |
0 |
| Myotherapy |
0 |
| Moxibustion |
0 |
| Apitherapy |
0 |
Below is a snapshot of the number of tweets by Twitter user for the week of 1/25/08 through 1/31/08. Note: these stats only include tweets that match one or more of the target keywords that altMD tracks and do not reflect every tweet by every Twitter user.