Whoop launches Humans, a social network built on your heartbeat

Humans lets Whoop members follow friends and family and share their health data. Followers can react and comment, and members can attach photos and notes to their numbers.

The shareable data includes sleep, recovery, strain and activities. Strain is Whoop's score for how hard your body worked that day. Recovery is its score for how ready you are for the next one.

It is rolling out to members at every tier at no extra cost. You still need a Whoop band, which is included in memberships that cost $199 to $359 a year.

CEO Will Ahmed called it "the most verifiably human network ever launched." He said every account represents a real person with a verified heartbeat.

The idea is simple. The numbers come straight from a wearable, so they are hard to fake. That is a contrast with feeds full of bots, AI-made posts and engagement bait.

The big picture: most social networks ask you to say how you are doing. Humans shows it, with data from your wrist.

Whoop already had a social feature called Teams. It is built around groups and leaderboards, and everyone in a group sees everyone else's information. Whoop says 57% of its members belong to at least one team.

Humans is meant to be more personal. You decide who follows you and who sees what.

For example, a trainer can follow a set of clients without the clients seeing one another's data. Teams is staying, and moves under the Community tab, below Humans.

In real life Say you and your sister both wear Whoop. You follow each other, she sees your sleep and workouts, and you see hers. If her recovery looks low on a stressful week, you can send a quick "take it easy today."

Whoop is also adding a feature called Moments. It lets members share workout photos and a snapshot of their day, along with their health data.

So a post can be a run, a sunrise photo and the strain score that came with it. It is closer to a normal social post, with the numbers attached.

Health data is personal, so the controls matter. Here is what Whoop says:

• You choose what to share: from sleep and recovery to workouts and achievements. It is all opt-in.
• You choose who follows you: and you can remove followers at any time.
• Stealth mode: go dark for a few days without changing your settings.
• Sensitive activities: anything you mark as sensitive is not shared by default.
• Medical information: health alerts and medical data are not shared at all, Ahmed said.
• Reporting: members can report a comment or photo, and Whoop says reported content is reviewed.

Ahmed also said Whoop does not sell member data. "Our product is not you; it's the membership," he told TechCrunch.

The catch: Ahmed did not directly answer whether a parent could follow a teenager's data. Whoop's minimum age is 13, and he pointed to the privacy controls and consent rules.

Ahmed said beta members engaged more when someone shared a low recovery score than a nearly perfect one. That suggests people use the feature to spot when a friend is struggling.

One Whoop member, Mike Bublitz, put it this way in the company's announcement: "If I see a friend's Recovery is low, I can check in and say, 'Hey, it's okay to take it easy today.'"

Ahmed expects families to be big users. You can imagine adult children checking in on aging parents, or a couple seeing how the other slept after a rough night.

Humans fits a larger push into health. Whoop has already added FDA-cleared ECG and atrial fibrillation detection, which is a check for an irregular heart rhythm. It also offers blood pressure insights, blood testing and medical record uploads.

Ahmed said Whoop has seen "huge growth" among people over 60 in the past 18 months, without giving figures. He said it was among the first companies accepted into a Medicare program that reimburses qualifying wearables.

Here are the other numbers he shared:

• Employees: about 1,200.
• Growth: membership on its software platform up more than 70% a year for three years.
• Members: nearly 4 million expected by the end of the year.
• Retail: Whoop devices go on sale at about 500 Ulta stores starting next March, with a goal of more than a thousand.

Whoop would not share its revenue or say whether it is profitable. On a stock market listing, Ahmed said it "will certainly IPO in the future."

Ahmed said Whoop's female audience has more than doubled from a year ago. That is part of why the Ulta deal matters: a beauty retailer puts a fitness band in front of shoppers who may never walk into an electronics store.

Humans also points at a different crowd than the leaderboard fans. Families, couples and coaches are the groups Ahmed named. A feed built around "how are you really doing?" suits them better than a ranking of who ran the farthest.

Why it matters: the more members use Humans, the more reasons their friends have to buy a band. A social feature can pull in new members, not just keep the ones Whoop already has.

Whoop is a private company, and Ahmed was guarded about its finances. He did say the company raised a very big funding round earlier this year.

A stock market listing is still a someday plan. Oura, its closest rival, shelved its own IPO of up to $2.2 billion in September, citing market uncertainty. Ahmed did not comment on that.

Whoop's closest rival is Oura, which this week announced a $625 million deal to buy Counsel Health, a service that offers on-demand doctors. Ahmed said he expects "more consolidation" among wearable, AI and clinician companies, and that Whoop is "in a position to be an acquirer."

Google also has a new screen-less band, the Fitbit Air, and Apple is reportedly working on a similar one. Ahmed mostly shrugged off the competition. Building a product does not guarantee success, he said.

• Members get it now: Humans is in the Whoop app today, with no extra fee.
• Check your settings first: sharing is opt-in, so pick who follows you and what they can see before you post.
• Use stealth mode: it is there for the days you would rather keep your numbers to yourself.
• Not a Whoop user? You need the band to join, so this is not an app anyone can download and try.