There are many ways to get answers online. I am a huge fan of Google and use it every day to find information that is already published and indexed. But today [EDITOR: actually June 30th, 2011, when this was published on my Posterous] I had a great “Aha” moment when I found an answer through Twitter instead, because it connected me to the best person in the world to answer a very specific question. Here’s how it went down:

My question:
How many physician bloggers are there in the United States?

Post #1

Response #1:

I already know that Doctor V, who follows me, is a physician blogger - one of the best, in fact. The point of this tweet was to alert our mutual followers that this question was worth reading, and that we would both be paying attention. This tweet did not go out to all of Doctor V’s 6,154 followers, because by starting the tweet with an @ mention, he limited it’s distribution to our mutual followers.

Response #2:

Barbara’s retweet is amazing, because it just alerted all 3,240 of her followers to my question. At least the ones that happen to see this tweet.

TwitterBot chimes in:

Whoa! Twitter is apparently scanning every tweet, detecting questions, and suggesting users who would be well-suited to answer them. DanielCass works at Kaiser Permanente, a very large healthcare provider organization here in California. Well done, twitterbot.

Responses #3-#6:

Some responses trickle in. Not exactly to the question I asked, but it’s a start. Everyone who is @mentioned in RayGoldberg’s and MatthewBrowning’s tweets is now alerted in a special way to my request - their “@mentions” inbox will include this tweet. That’s how Twitter lets conversations expand across follower streams. The @mention is just high-friction enough – there is a cost to publishing it, of having your followers know who you are trying to reach out to – that it is not abused by most users. Twitter’s interaction design is absolutely sensational.

Response #7

Grandrounds is an aggregator of medical blogs. Getting warmer.

Response #8

DrVes is a physician, professor, and expert in online presence of physicians. He is an adviser to NEJM, and his website has a lot of useful resources for physicians. And he gives a me a rough answer to my question.

Response #9

The interaction between DrVes and scanman leads to several pieces of useful information. Call it instant-peer review. Did I mention DrVes is in Chicago, scanman is in India, and I’m in San Francisco?

Post #2:

I clarify my question, and reach out to Danielle based on Twitter Bot’s suggestion.

Response #10

Another link in the chain

Response #11

And another link

Response #12

mR is Manhattan Research, which specializes in health care market research. Bingo.

The Lowdown:

20 hours of asynchronous interactions eleven people involved, 10 of which I have never met before, from San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, Washington DC, New Haven, and a city in India called Salem. one twitter bot
I get my answer Twitter shows off how powerful a communication tool it can be

Twitter versus Google:

What happens if I google my query instead? The first result is the exact same question on Quora, which I asked a few weeks ago, unfortunately still answered. The advantage of Quora would be that the answer would become permanent and well-organized, instead of vanishing in the void of tweets past. But right now the community I need is on Twitter.