The app works by assuming several factors. For example, it's figured that the average word length in a tweet is about 6 characters. It assumes the average user's typing speed is 60 words per minute, that the user is of an average or healthy weight and normally burns around 2.65 calories per minute, and that it takes around 23 seconds to write and send a tweet of 140 characters. Based on these figures, the app's creators have determined that sending a tweet burns around 1.03 calories.
Here, you can see the difference between calories burned by a more frequent tweeter versus one who tweets less often:
Sadly, there's no ability to calculate the difference between tweeting while mobile versus tweeting from the web. But although we're sure that updating one's stream while on-the-go burns more calories, we don't advocate the Twitter habit as a necessarily healthful lifestyle choice -- remember, you burn calories while you're sleeping, too, but no one ever called sleeping a good form of exercise.
TweetCalories was constructed as a clever bit of marketing by gargantuan ad agency Grupo ABC for a Brazilian gym, Companhia Athletica. What do you think about this social media marketing attempt: Does it hit or miss?
[img credit: pagedooley]