Since joining Facebook in June 2008, Health.com has racked up more than 35,000 fans, and we thought we’d tell you a little bit about them.
Take a look at the graph below and you’ll see that our fans on Facebook are 73% female; 51% of them are between 25 and 44 years old. And 69% of Health.com’s male fans are between 25 and 44 too. We’re adding this little bit of knowledge to the growing research on who goes online for health information and how they do it.
Jupiter Research recently released a report, “Social Media in Health,” in which they asked:
- How are online users creating, sharing, and consuming health content online?
- What tactics help cultivate community and spur content creation?
And this is what they found:
“Forty percent of online users connected with others online and via mobile phones about health and wellness issues in the last 12 months, up from 34 percent in 2006. E-mail and mobile text are the channels growing most rapidly, while message board usage is stagnant. Enabling private conversations, helping users network effectively, and facilitating connections that are non-site based will help motivate participation.”
So, it looks like more and more people are using their cell phones and PDAs to get online health information and fewer people are going into message boards.
Do our findings on Facebook match up with your experience? Tell us about yourself and how you get the information you need. We’d love to know.
Comments (1)
I’m female, and in my early 50’s. I’ve depended on on-line web-sites for medical information since 1998. I get two emailed newsletters (one on organ transplants, and on on cutaneous T-cell lymphoma). I access no information from cell phone or PDA; all my on-line experience is right off my PC. I’ve got a triple whammy: heart disease, organ transplant and CTCL. The only group I’ve encountered that has a vibrant, healthy on-line message board is transplant related. So while my experience doesn’t completely match with the above profile, there are certainly areas of overlap.