You may not know this but the UK government runs a Facebook page devoted to encouraging organ donating with over 53,000 members. As well, there is a Facebook group about Organ Donors with over 8,000 members. The use of social media has now spread to the US, but with respect to kidney donation it remains sporadic. Andrew B. Einhorn writes: "Damon Brown found a kidney on Facebook after telling his story on a special page the Seattle dad created under the name, 'Damon Kidney,' reported the New York Daily News. "His friends and family forwarded the link to everyone they knew and on Jan. 3 a woman his wife has known for years, but not someone they consider a close family friend, will be giving him a kidney."
Einhorn goes on: “Prior to the introduction of social media, patients sought donors via word of mouth, ads, church bulletins, and donor lists. Now, people can connect to one another on massive scales and leverage those numbers to find that one in a million person willing to literally give away a piece of themselves.”
Not everyone agrees though. In a recent interesting article in the Economist. The author writes: “Most commentary on social media ignores an obvious truth—that the value of things is largely determined by their rarity. The more people tweet, the less attention people will pay to any individual tweet. The more people “friend” even passing acquaintances, the less meaning such connections have.
Social media may pose limitations for the business world, but for identifying kidney donors it seems like it's an ideal solution. Since there are almost 90,000 people in the United States currently on the kidney transplant waiting list, I don't see why transplant programs in the US don't encourage greater use of the social media.
