What an interesting week in the medicine twittersphere and blogosphere! In an exclusive club like physicians, politicians, and, say, Tour De France riders - people in these groups don't like to call each other out. It's kind of a like a unspoken "code" that is out there. However, when one peer goes after another peer - like Netanyahu vs Obama - or Tyler Hamilton vs Lance Armstrong - or, in this case @Doctor_V vs @Mommy_Doctor - this is where things get really interesting.
If you didn't already hear, there was a post this week on 33Charts called "Unprofessional Physician Behavior on Twitter." Now, the message behind this post is nothing new - it is unprofessional to share patient information on social media. Now, this post was particularly interesting in that one physician called out another physician on specific tweets.
The post itself was ok, but what fascinated me was the response that has been happening in the days following - this includes over 100 comments on that particular post, numerous blog posts, and tons of twitter chatter. The issue has gone beyond what the post was to what seems like groups of twitterers taking sides and taking personal shots on social media.
I hope you can join me this week for Family Medicine Rocks Podcast 11 on Thursday, May 26, 2011 at 9pm Eastern Daylight Time on BlogTalkRadio in which I will review the post, analyze the reaction/fallout, and try to make some predictions on what this means to the physician social media community moving forward. (Also check out the video post above)
Will certain people gain or lose social media reputation following this incident? Will this divide the physician community beyond repair? Or will an incident like this, in some strange way, make the community stronger as we move ahead? For people new to the show, there will also be a live chat room to talk during the show. Even if you cannot join live, you can always download the show later on the archived podcast. Hope you can join me for this intriguing show this week!