What and why people share online (it's not what you think!)

Forget cat pictures. People want to share real information.

Of the 15 most shared news stories on Facebook on June 17, only one was fluff. That's the conclusion from a report published by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. 

The top shared stories were all of substance — all going deep with information, insight or perspetive.

This provides content owners and creators — especially in the health care arena — with a prime opportunity to be that trusted source of information.

Read more at the Knight Blog.

Source: Knight Blog, accessed 6/24/13.

If I were still a kid ...

... I'd want to go to this summer camp!

Visualize what's trending on Google

All Google's "hot searches" are now available in living color.

Google's trends page has a cool visualizer that sets the hot searches into motion — creating animated colored squares that live update as searches are entered.  

College scholarships? There's an app for that.

And there's an even better story behind the app. 

Drexel University junior Christopher Gray of Birmingham, Ala., didn't have money for college. So he applied for 34 scholarships and received $1.3 million in funding. That will more than fund his entire higher education career — through PhD! — and has left him with a little extra.

So he started a company and developed an app — Scholly — to help others find scholarships. 

There's a great piece on Philly.com that tell's Gray's whole story. 

It's inspiring.  

Is obesity a disease?

With the American Medical Association declaring obesity a disease, perhaps now our health care industry can truly get behind making our communities healthier.

The designation alone will not create change. 

But it does create a significant shift in thinking, one that can advance a targeted discussion that can perhaps finally bring together the many disparate and fractured systems to tackle a major issue that affects quality and cost of care.

Dr. Suzanne Koven, in her "In Practice" blog on boston.com, said it well:

"The AMA has no specific authority to designate obesity as a disease, but it's decided to use its considerable influence to effect a cultural shift. The hope is, that if obesity is thought of as a disease, insurance companies will be more supportive of obese people, researchers will pursue the problem more aggressively, public health efforts to curb obesity will be strengthened, and individual clinicians ... will be better trained to address obesity with their patients."

It's time to move from talking about healthy communities to actually creating them. This step certainly helps.