Are There Too Many Health Chats On Twitter?
Is it me or has the number of medically related twitter chats just exploded in the past 4-6 weeks or so? In the past few weeks, there has been a lot of discussion about the proper and improper use of the twitter hash tag. I mean if more than 50% of the tweet are hash tags, then I gotta problem with it.
Twitter by it’s very nature is whiny. I mean, one of twitter’s first functions back in the day (in my opinion) and one of the first uses of twitter for the newer user is a place to vent. And, people complain, whine, vent about a great variety of stuff. But, not about the number of tweet chats that have been popping up recently?
Maybe I’m crazy, but will twitter ever get to the point when there are too many chats? Probably not. However, something that I have seen in the past few weeks is the selection of what I call the “golden” time of 9pm Eastern Time.
There is probably some solid data out there somewhere, but it seems like 9pET is the most common time for chats to happen (at least if a great number of the people participating are in the Eastern Time zone). And trying to navigate two or three chats going on at the same time is very interesting. I know when I started my podcast (back in the day LOL), I chose to go at 9pET as well because that time seemed to capture the most people for a live podcast.
Eventually, someone, who is very creative and more devoted than me at this stuff, is just going to take the time to accumulate all the medically related twitter chats out there an put it on one website. I mean, that is something that would be really interesting to check out.
Now, do I think that there are too many chats right now? No. However, if new chats keep popping up at the rate they are now, I do predict some kind of backlash where some med social media pundit will declare twitter chats as no longer productive because we will be too saturated by them. Am I wrong? I know people will let me know…. 🙂
*This blog post was originally published at Family Medicine Rocks Blog - Mike Sevilla, MD*
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