Social Media’s Health Depends On Greater Trust

Curiously, the innovation investments made in the spaces of search and social media seem to be paralleling one another. Both areas are increasingly recognising need to emphasis quality over scale.

In other words, both platforms have matured in recent years to a point where their diffusion and ubiquity has reached a scale where their value, in terms of search results and the quality of personal networks, is arguably diminishing.

In other words, a tipping point has been reached where diminshing returns are setting in. A response to this system failure (in relative terms), is an increasing range of innovations to do with vertical search systems (or databases) and subject or audience-specific social networks have emerged. Interestingly, the one subject area which is straddling both is health - witness the beta of Google Health and Health 2.0 social networks like Patients Like Me and Organised Wisdom.

In the case of social networks, current set-ups simply do not offer the prerequisite integrity to give members confidence in crowd ‘wisdom’. Every network has ‘influencers’, but in a large scale operation like Facebook or MySpace, their influence diminishes over time for two key reasons: fewer people have confidence in their opinion (diminshing credibility), and they are seen to be less likely to resemble the average member as the network grows.

Further, as the number of nodes in the network increases, the search to confirm an individual’s expertise in a particular subject area becomes more laborious, presenting a real barrier to the ongoing efficiency of the network as a conduit for reliable information. Enter the emergence of specialist social networks.

In the case of health, the trend is being spearheaded by primarily by patients, or at the very least, individuals affected by a particular illness, either directly or via friends and family. This commonality of experience, told through stories, opinion and advice, represents a powerful influence on individuals who feel isolated through a lack of support, or overwhelmed by a plethora of professional advice.

To breach the gap comes social media technologies and platforms operating within a far more specialist environment. As the following graph illustrates, the sources most preferred by people seeking answers on matters of health include the Internet and doctors, followed at a distance by relatives/friends/co-workers.

In this research (iCrossing, January 2008), the Internet was most nominated because it had the ability to put people in contact with individuals and/or their personal stories telling of their own experiences. It is this desire for first-hand knowledge which so completely overwhelms every other potential source of news, and for that matter, comfort.

The Health 2.0 phenomenon represents social media’s ‘higher calling’, far removed from the banalities of current systems.