Social media has been penetrating into our daily life in an unimaginable speed. Facebook, the most popular application of social media that was launched just eight years ago on February 4 2004, has reached over 750 million active members globally (Anderson et.al, 2012). It is “one of the most-trafficked sites in the world” (Facebook, 2011), even more visited than Google. The benefits brought by social-media for organizations are even bigger than expected. One company was reported by the New York Times, when a popular blog endorsement had helped grow its sales from $100,000 to $4 million (Jaret, 2006).
Social media has become an undeniable force, and its real-time, informal communication style represents both possibility and liability for the healthcare industry. We can see that social media has impacted healthcare industry from both organisations’ and patients’ perspectives. The following three examples can give us a general idea about how social media application in healthcare related areas.