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Updated: Swine flu and Twitter - unlikely partners

Since this article went live two days ago, people have been talking about swine flu on Twitter at close to the same rate.  Yesterday the trend dipped down to about 8,000 tweets per hour, but today they were back up.  See the updated chart below. 

You would think that a Using Computers Examiner would more likely write about Twitter than the swine flu. But in this day of social media and ubiquitous use of technology, health issue meets the computer age. Many people have been tweeting about the swine flu. The numbers have really shot up in the last 15 hours, to almost 10,000 tweets per hour, as this chart shows. 

 
 
Does this mean that people are scared? Or does it mean that people are just watching the epidemic threatening to become pandemic and want to talk about it? We do know from this chart that people are definitely talking about it. And they are using new technology to do it. 
 
Social media sites have really changed the way we communicate. And, who knows? Maybe the CDC and the WHO will start tweeting too, to help get the word out. 
 
*** Updated Chart ***
 
This updated chart shows the last three days of "swine flu" chatter on Twitter. 
 
 
 
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Using Computers Examiner

Harold Nolte has worked for Sperry Univac, Unisys, Compaq, HP, Iomega and Novell. He loves to teach people about computers and how to use them.

Comments

  • jenn 2 years ago
    Report Abuse

    That is prolific...or so it seems. And this is just the beginning!

  • stop ur spam 2 years ago
    Report Abuse

    btw, re: linked aticle you reply spammed me as well as lots of others on Twitter with, CDC is already using Twitter to tweet: e.g., @cdc_ehealth @CDCemergency @CDCFlu

    do your research and, also stop spamming, as you are only going to get reported to Spam @ Twitter.

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