“Like” us on Facebook: An evaluation of the JAAD's inaugural year on Facebook

Abstract

*Does not add up to 100% because not all Facebook users specify age and gender. T he Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology (JAAD) officially joined Facebook on May 31, 2011 (https://www. facebook.com/aadjournal). With approximately 1.2 billion registered users worldwide, Facebook is the undisputed leader in social media. Of thosewho use social networking sites, over 90% are members of Facebook. With the ever-growing importance of Facebook in the lives of patients and practitioners, we sought to describe factors promoting user interaction on JAAD’s Facebook page. On July 18, 2012, 2 administrators for JAAD’s Facebook page reviewed the page’s insight section, which provides information on user demographics andmetrics on JAAD’s posts. Userswho are fans of an organization, product, or concept can show support by clicking on a ‘‘Like’’ button with a thumbs-up symbol at the top of the Facebook page. The demographics of JAAD’s fans were researched to describe the population responsible for determining the top posts (Table I). We also used the insights section to determine the top-5 posts with the largest reach, the most engaged users, and the most reader discussion (Table II). A post is created when text is published on a page for users to read. All post data were gathered from the first 28 days after the post’s publication. The demographics of JAAD’s fans show an unexpected variety of people from all over the world, with only 27.9% of fans from the United States. Interestingly, Braziliansmakeup adisproportionately large segment of JAAD fans relative to the country’s