Is Facebook making a move into health and fitness apps?

For those not keen on forking out the cash for a dedicated activity tracking device, the Moves app is one of our favourites for monitoring your steps throughout the day. It seems we’re not the only fans, as it’s been downloaded more than 4 million times since its launch last year.

In an interesting, but hardly surprising, move Inside Facebook reports that Moves has this week been acquired by… you guessed it… Facebook.

Facebook commented on the acquisition in a statement:

“As part of Facebook’s multi-app strategy, we’re excited to announce that the popular Moves app will be joining Facebook’s suite of applications. Key members of Moves will be joining Facebook at our headquarters in Menlo Park, CA.”

The Moves app will continue to run as a separate, stand-alone application. The Moves team has built an incredible tool for the millions of people who want to better understand their daily fitness activity, and we’re looking forward to the app continuing to gain momentum.”

If you’re a big fan, don’t worry, the Moves app isn’t going anywhere. Your favourite app will still remain, but we imagine some of you probably won’t be all that comfortable knowing the social network could easily get it hands on every scrap of data about what you do and where you go throughout the day.

Instead of gobbling up the app, its key team members are going to be joining Facebook’s developers “to work on building and improving their products and services” according to a blog post on the Moves company blog.

This could simply mean Moves is being taken under Facebook’s wing and being added to its growing suite of apps. However, it could also signal that the social network is planning on taking a step into the exciting mobile health space, which would prove to be VERY interesting indeed given Google’s upcoming iWatch and Healthbook plans.