It's blogging anniversary week here at Family Medicine Rocks, and as I was saying in yesterday's post, I've been reflective about where I have been in the social media world, and where I am at right now. What follows below are some things I consider the Worst and the Best about Health Care Social Media:
What's with all the yelling?
I've observed that through the years social media in the health care space has become more and more people yelling, and less and less people listening. What's funny (and sad) is that people try to champion the "breaking down of silos" and the bring together of different social media communities, but no one is really making an effort at doing it. A lot of people out there are more than comfortable staying in their own comfort zone community, uttering platitudes, and pointing fingers saying, "You should do this," while themselves not making the effort to reach out to other social media communities.
Where's the community?
I remember when I started my blogging life seven years ago. I would discover blogs by reading other people's blogs. This was before twitter and facebook when you actually had to earn your audience by generating good content to pull people back to your site, instead of relying on a autobot to tweet your links for you.
Back then, you really got to know people by reading their long form blogging writing. You were proud to get and receive blog comments and a friendship was started. Now, the people on social media ask and demand that their content be RT and shared, and oh by the way, they have never RT any of my content. Hey, please fund my crowdsourcing project, but after we reach the goal, there is no thanks or recognition, just moving on to the next project. That's why I don't donate to those projects anymore.
Where's the innovation?
When is the last time you saw something really innovative in health care social media? I mean really? Both Twitter and facebook became were introduced in 2006-2007 and really popular in the health care social media community in 2008-09. These two are still the dominant platforms in social media. Of course, there have been things like Friendfeed then and Pinterest now, but these remained outside the social media mainstream. Is the innovation in Health Care Social Media really driven by what happens with tech industry innovation? Do we have to wait until apps like Vine and SnapChat prove themselves in the health care community before we start using these? Am I missing something here?
Learned A Lot From Twitter Chats
I admit that I was late to twitter chats. This is a hat tip to Dana Lewis and everyone else who runs health care related twitter chats out there. Now, there are a bunch of them, and I have learned so much as I listen to the chatter and learn things I have never learned before. But, in recent articles, I think the twitter chat format is threatened because twitter is going to to turn off connectivity to tweetchat and tweetdeck is going away as well. Hopefully, there will be new opportunities like oneqube to pick up the slack and continue the twitter chats
It's Still About In Person Meetings
I wrote about this recently, but one of the strengths of social media is still the inperson meetings that I have had through the years with people I have met on twitter and social media. I still remember my first twitter meetup. It was in Las Vegas in the fall of 2009. You'll see that in the video below (yes, I was carrying a video camera with me, even back then). You never really forget the first time you put a twitter ID to a real person right in front of you - a sureal experience to say the least.
I'm sure there are other topics to talk about, but these are the ones which came to my mind first. Feel free to add your own topics and opinions in the comment section. I was hoping to give perspective of a guy who has been around the block a few times in health care social media, and maybe (gasp), start a dialogue and discussion. Or, maybe I still think it's seven years ago...