Searching for Social Health

Facebook has passed Google. For the first time Americans spent more time last month soaking in social updates than searching for information. Facebook's capacity to enable individuals to share their perspective on nearly everything binds people together in a way that search is unable to do.  This is why we haven't seen social health applications emerge before now. The necessary infrastructure for social sharing, caring and supporting were non existent, small and radically fragmented. With Facebook's rise as the super gorilla of social networks, new types of applications that leverage one's now connected vast network of personal relationships can emerge.  First we saw social sharing, then social gaming, and what we are beginning to see now is the rise of social health.  In the Google era people were stuck searching for health-related information, now they can find that information, share it, and act on it together. That makes all the difference.