On January 22dn, 2009 Naimul Huq wrote:
Twitter is quickly becoming a buzzword with many permutations. Suffixes, prefixes, and infixes give the denizens of the twittersphere (see what I did there) a new vocab mash-up opportunity the likes of which haven’t been seen since Blog was added to the Oxford English Dictionary. But more than just buzzing words, Twitter has quickly become the chosen method of communication for social media mavens world-wide, including people interested in health care. When I first heard about Twitter I thought, “Well that seems like a waste of time. Why would I spend my hours sending out status updates when I could just blog?” The fact is people didn’t really want to read my blog. It was generally too long and too hard to find. What Twitter offered me was a way to connect to people in short bites of information that others actually subscribed to. Because that’s what a twitter ‘follow’ is–a subscription to your words. And there is no easier way to get people to start listening to you despite ever decreasing attention spans. But speaking out is only a fraction of Twitter’s functionality.
Twitter thrives because it enables its users penchant for link-love. The service puts tools in place that allow you to share and share alike, in line with the Creative Commons mantra. When I post something interesting, my followers will re-tweet it to their friends and eventually someone might blog about it. In the gradients of media, with television news still at the top, Twitter remains a bottom feeder, but unlike archaic news channels of the past (sending in submissions via mail or phoning the paper) Twitter is a massively populated, rapid news-sharing medium. Tweets turn into blogs which turn into interviews which feeds into traditional journalism. When the US Airways jet crashed into the Hudson this past week, Twitter was abuzz before anything hit the NY Times homepage or CNN. In the hours following the crash, CNN correspondents started to gather photos and videos taken from tweets via cellphones equipped with cameras. The service has since passed Digg in popularity. Citizen journalists have enhanced the news from the attacks in India to the crisis in Gaza. Twitter is more than a chance to post photos of your cat (no matter how genuine that makes you feel), it is a powerful, wonderfully social communication tool.
But what does this mean for health innovators? On my twitter stream I follow doctors, health policy experts, medical librarians, health IT developers, insurance agents, nurses, and scientists. When I have a health related question, I can usually get an answer in five minutes or less. When I want to learn something new, I can generally discover someone willing to be interviewed. When we do something great, we have friends to talk about it with. But more significant than all this is my ability to keep abreast of the latest developments in science, technology, and health care through the constant flow of updates. Twitter allows me to synthesize information in a whole new way: through the help of others, hundreds of times a day. Then, when I feel I’ve learned and thought and questioned enough to take action, I can start to rally people to me by asking everyone to meet up and enact a bit of change. It all starts with a message, 140 characters at a time.
So join our conversation. Many Innovation Center associates are already there. Start an account at www.twitter.com and follow our tweets. We’ll be sure to follow you back.
So join our conversation. Many Innovation Center associates are already there. Start an account at www.twitter.com and follow our tweets. We’ll be sure to follow you back.
January 23rd, 2009 | English
Comments
Powered by Facebook Comments