PWC Study: Consumers getting comfortable with social media as a health resource
Around a third of US adults use social media as a health resource, according to a survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers – whether seeking out medical info, sharing symptoms and experiences or rating drugs, devices, doctors, hospitals and health plans. The consulting giant surveyed 1,060 US adults and found that 42% have viewed health-related consumer reviews (more or less evenly split between reviews of treatments, doctors, hospitals and health insurers) through social networks like Twitter and Facebook. A third have read of friends’ or family members’ health experiences through social media, while 29% have read of other patients’ experience with a disease they have and 24% have viewed health-related videos and images posted by other patients. Not surprisingly, perhaps, those users skew young. Where more than four-fifths of 18-24-year olds said they’d share health information through social media, fewer than half (45%) of those 45-64 said the same. And across the board, users choose community sites over company-sponsored ones, which see hundreds of posts and comments per day where community sites see thousands. “In fact, community sites had 24 times more social media activity on average than any of the health industry companies” over the one-week timeframe studied, said the PwC report.
McDonald’s discovers social media can backfire when people hate you | Grist
When McDonald’s tried to launch the #McDStories Twitter campaign, they clearly envisioned a bunch of fond memories from Big Mac lovers, interspersed with behind-the-scenes glimpses into the McDonald’s “food”-making process. (They kicked it off with a link to “some of the hard-working people dedicated to providing McDs with quality food every day.”) Unfortunately, they really, really misunderstood social media. Result: #McDStories was quickly overrun with the grossest, weirdest McDonald’s non-appreciation its non-fans could come up with.
Source: grist.org
One Per Cent: FBI releases plans to monitor social networks
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has quietly released details of plans to continuously monitor the global output of Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, offering a rare glimpse into an activity that the FBI and other government agencies are reluctant to discuss publicly. The plans show that the bureau believes it can use information pulled from social media sites to better respond to crises, and maybe even to foresee them.
Twitter Revealed Epidemic Two Weeks Before Health Officials [STUDY]
In particular, a new report shows that Twitter provided an early account of the 2010 cholera outbreak in Haiti. According to the study published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, Internet news and social media were faster transmitters of information in tracking the cholera epidemic in Haiti than health officials. The tweets provided information that health officials wouldn’t report until two weeks later.
blog.bufferapp.com: 6 Incredible Examples Of How Twitter Predicts The Future
1.) Twitter Accurately Predicts Politician’s Victory at New Hampshire Primary
2.) Twitter knows how you will be feeling this Friday
3.) Did Twitter predict the revolution in Egypt?
4.) Predict the future yourself with Twitter and Timeu.se
5.) Hedgefund to make bets based on Tweets – beats the market
6.) Predicting and stopping the spread of diseases with Twitter
Note: All of these predictions are of the kind of collecting data early and seeing a pattern in that data in order to see what is currently emerging. That is just a small part of what we use the word “prediction” for… Not that it is unimportant but it might be problematic to call it predictions without to define what kind of predictions it is…
Social Media Stats That Will Blow Your Mind |
A very interesting number to take away from this data and also the report is that the fastest growing demographic for social media use currently is the 65+ age group. It grow almost 50% in just the last few years. Now part of that can be the resilience of the baby boomer generation to adopt new social technologies but I think many are starting to realize the raw power that online social communication can bring to a business or even on a personal level.
Source: brandignity.com
new tools in general, and Twitter in particular, greatly challenge the binary dichotomy of attention as something that is either given or taken away, distracted. Instead, these tools allow us to direct attention to destinations where it can be sustained with more concentration and immersion.
- Maria Popova, In a new world of informational abundance, content curation is a new kind of authorship
Go read the whole piece: it is truly brilliant.
I also find it extremely interesting that Popova is using a technique in this piece that I have developed here, where I call out the most critical statements in my work. She’s using bold, while I make the fonts larger. In this way, a cursory scan read will still hit paydirt. She’s writing about the change in our attention and the job of curators, and certainly pulling out the central themes is one such job.
(via stoweboyd)
(via emergentfutures)
Source: niemanlab.org
Twitter in the Classroom: Watch This Teacher Engage Shy Students in Learning History
Still skeptical about the value of using Twitter as a tool to engage introverted students in classroom lessons? You’re not alone. A recent survey of almost 2,000 teachers found that half think that using Twitter (and Facebook) in the classroom “is harmful to the learning experience.” But, Los Angeles history teacher Enrique Legaspi disagrees with the naysayers. Last year he went to a workshop that discussed ways to use Twitter in teaching and now his students—even the shy ones—at Hollenbeck Middle School in East L.A. are speaking up more
» via GOOD
I usually thinks it is wrong to talk about a technology or specific software in cases like this. The important here I think is the different social characteristics that different tools have - and that the new tools of communication is offering a new spectrum of tools with new or other characteristics that might support a learning situation.
Source: infoneer-pulse
Akio Toyoda, president of Toyota Motor Corporation, said: “Social networking services are transforming human interaction and modes of communication. The automobile needs to evolve in step with that transformation
Toyota unveils ‘Toyota Friend’ in-car social networking - Marketing news - Marketing magazine (via mediafuturist)
This is true!
But what is more emergent is the need for the automotive industry to rewire itself so it can work in the 21th century which will be characterized by very different organizational models, a changed societal agenda and repeating global shortages and crises which will cause all markes to swing up and down in an unpredictable way.
The transplantation of the car into a social media world is in comparison a pretty small and insignificant change which the car manufacturers themself most likely will not have a major role in.
(via emergentfutures)
Source: futuristgerd
