How Twitter has connected the colorectal community

Social media has revolutionized contemporary communication allowing billions of people to rapidly interact and share experiences and knowledge.It has been stated that social media is an increasingly ''necessary component of surgery practice'' [1].While the adoption and utility of Twitter in various medical and surgical specialties have recently been realized, studies among colorectal surgeons in the UK report adoption rates which lag behind those described in other specialties [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10].This underutilization represents a potentially missed opportunity for colorectal surgeons to engage, debate, and dialog with one another, their patients, and the general public in real time, on a global scale.This article serves to outline ways in which colorectal surgeons can use Twitter to learn from and engage with fellow colorectal surgeons, patients, and other key health stakeholders worldwide.It also introduces the goals of the journal's Twitter account, @TechColoproctol.While Facebook and LinkedIn are useful for established personal and professional networks, Twitter, given the unique functionality of its platform, is particularly useful in academia, specifically for expanding one's network as well as conducting and disseminating research (''Using Twitter in academia -Emerald Group Publishing.''2015. 10 Jul.2016 http://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/about/pdf/ twitter_academics.pdf)[11,12].Referred to as a form of ''microblogging,'' Twitter allows users to send and read short 140-character messages (i.e., Tweets).Tweets can include links to online resources, images/pictures, short videos/multimedia, and interactive polls.Users subscribe to others' tweets by ''following'' their user accounts; all Twitter accounts are unique, starting with the ''@''character.In addition to posting original content, users can retweet others' tweets, ''like'' them, and reply to them.Hashtags (#) serve as keywords and phrases, making them easily searchable and thus more likely viewed by a larger audience than one's followers.It is important to note these hashtags commonly generate international participation.The ubiquity of the Internet allows hashtag communities to transcend geographical and temporal boundaries.Using Twitter and particularly with the aid of hashtags such as #colorectalsurgery, #colorectalcancer, and focused conference hashtags, colorectal surgeons worldwide can readily interact, disseminate research, and educate the general public (Table 1).Medical conferences, through specific event hashtags and live tweeting [13], have increasingly adopted Twitter to amplify the content of scientific meetings [14].For example, live congress tweeting at the American College of Surgeons 2015 Clinical Congress reached over 55 million impressions on Twitter from 15 thousand tweets, with nearly 3 thousand participants tweeting its hashtag #ACSCC15.These numbers in themselves are noteworthy, but their significance is further highlighted when compared with the 2013 Congress, when the hashtag #ACSCC13 obtained 5 million impressions from 3000 tweets of only 200 participants [15].The social media movement, #ILookLikeASurgeon [16], illustrated that Twitter engagement could mobilize a critical mass of surgeons on an international issue.Recently, a group of Twitter-active colorectal surgeons put