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Jeffrey D. Larson, Commentary on: Social Media in Plastic Surgery Practices: Emerging Trends in North America, Aesthetic Surgery Journal, Volume 31, Issue 4, May 2011, Pages 442–443, https://doi.org/10.1177/1090820X11405028
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In “Social Media in Plastic Surgery Practices: Emerging Trends in North America,” Dr. Mathes and his coauthors attempt to quantify and describe the impact of social media—defined as “applications that offer a way to disseminate information to a targeted audience in real time”—on plastic surgery practices. Through results from an electronic survey e-mailed to all board-certified or board-eligible plastic surgeons, they characterize the prevalence of social media among these practitioners and identify trends toward its use (and avoidance). The authors conclude that while social media is an up-and-coming phenomenon in the world of plastic surgery, its application is generally approached with caution and has yet to see widespread use by plastic surgeons.
Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are part of an online phenomenon known as Web 2.0.1 Originally coined in 2004 after the “dot-com bubble” burst, Web 2.0 describes a constantly-evolving online environment populated by user-generated content. In this environment, social media sites are part of a milieu of online material created not by software companies or corporations, but by the very consumers of web content themselves. Social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook fall under this purview and join other web phenomena, including blogs (short for “web log”), wikis, podcasts, and multimedia sharing sites such as Flickr and YouTube.
