••• crowdsourcing
It’s the flu season – and there’s an app for that
Researchers have begun a crowdsourcing experiment to gauge if a smartphone app and social engagement can predict flu outbreaks more quickly than traditional clinic-based reporting. The University of Wisconsin – Madison (UW-Madison) Population Health Sciences Department has partnered with Seattle research company Survey Analytics to develop a smartphone app for students, faculty and staff to track flu activity on campus.
Led by professor Dr. Ajay Sethi and doctoral student Christine Muganda, this experiment is designed to allow real-time flu surveillance data to be captured through an app called OutSmart Flu, available for download through the iTunes and Google Play stores. Participants of OutSmart Flu will be asked to answer general health questions and report if they are feeling well, sick or experiencing flu-like symptoms.
To track the flu in the U.S. currently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has partnerships with 3,000 clinics across the U.S. UW-Madison’s University Health Services (UHS) is one of the CDC sentinel sites. The CDC method relies on counting the number of students walking into UHS seeking health care for flu-like illness. However, in 2010, Google showed that it could identify epidemic flu in the U.S. two weeks earlier than current CDC methods.
Many people with flu-like symptoms are more likely to go online for health information before seeing a doctor. The data collected in this experiment will be compared to flu activity reports from UW-Madison’s UHS.
••• social media research
Facebook adds hashtags; improves searchability
Facebook and Twitter have long been in competition to be the No. 1 hub for interactive viewing during prime-time television events like the Emmys and Monday Night Football. But Facebook has a steep hill to climb, as many have already grown accustomed to turning to Twitter for the latest opinions and breaking news. Over 1.24 million people tweeted about the Breaking Bad series finale in September, for example, which clearly shows that an engaged audience is out there. Whether Facebook can appeal to that audience remains to be seen.
So in an attempt to rival Twitter as the go-to place for trending news, Facebook has updated its Graph Search function to allow users to search for conversation topics within status updates, comments and posts. The update aims to make Facebook more conducive to real-time conversations and comes on the heels of Facebook recently adding hashtag functionality.
The update also allows users to search for posts or comments from a certain time period or location (e.g., “posts by my friends from last month”) or posts that they already composed or commented on. However, users can only search for content that has been shared with them or that appears in public posts.