As many a Facebook friend will tell you, revealing more about your private life than you would like is an everyday hazard of the web.
But a new concept for an app could see social network users sharing information far more sensitive than a drunken party snap.
Researchers are exploring whether websites such as Facebook could be used to sift through users' friend lists and flag up which of them may be carrying a sexually transmitted infection.
A team at the University of North Carolina's Center for Infectious Diseases hopes this approach can harness the power of increasingly ubiquitous social networks to prevent the spread of diseases such as HIV and chlamydia.
At an international health conference held last month, Dr Peter Leone - the professor leading the research - pointed out how a patient's circle of friends can be a vital clue in identifying who could be at risk of infection.
The theory is that, since social networks mirror our real-life friendship circles, services such as Facebook could be used to contact an entire at-risk group and tell them they may be in danger.
In a previous study Dr Leone tested the sexual partners of newly diagnosed HIV patients and found 20 per cent of them showed up HIV-positive.
His latest research looks at this finding in light of the idea that people who move in similar social circles often have sexual partners in common.
Dr Leone aims to develop a more precise approach to tracking the spread of STDs than simply focusing on at-risk demographics or limiting the search to those with whom the patient has had direct sexual contact.
Speaking to Salon, Dr Leone told of how a syphilis outbreak in North Carolina demonstrated how STDs can thrive within a social circle.
He said: 'When we looked at the networks we could connect many of the cases to sexual encounters, and when we asked who they hung out with, who they knew, we could connect 80 percent of the cases.'
Read more: http://www.dailymail...l#ixzz1qtEfvmk2
Question: What are your thoughts on this new concept?
But a new concept for an app could see social network users sharing information far more sensitive than a drunken party snap.
Researchers are exploring whether websites such as Facebook could be used to sift through users' friend lists and flag up which of them may be carrying a sexually transmitted infection.
A team at the University of North Carolina's Center for Infectious Diseases hopes this approach can harness the power of increasingly ubiquitous social networks to prevent the spread of diseases such as HIV and chlamydia.
At an international health conference held last month, Dr Peter Leone - the professor leading the research - pointed out how a patient's circle of friends can be a vital clue in identifying who could be at risk of infection.
The theory is that, since social networks mirror our real-life friendship circles, services such as Facebook could be used to contact an entire at-risk group and tell them they may be in danger.
In a previous study Dr Leone tested the sexual partners of newly diagnosed HIV patients and found 20 per cent of them showed up HIV-positive.
His latest research looks at this finding in light of the idea that people who move in similar social circles often have sexual partners in common.
Dr Leone aims to develop a more precise approach to tracking the spread of STDs than simply focusing on at-risk demographics or limiting the search to those with whom the patient has had direct sexual contact.
Speaking to Salon, Dr Leone told of how a syphilis outbreak in North Carolina demonstrated how STDs can thrive within a social circle.
He said: 'When we looked at the networks we could connect many of the cases to sexual encounters, and when we asked who they hung out with, who they knew, we could connect 80 percent of the cases.'
Read more: http://www.dailymail...l#ixzz1qtEfvmk2
Question: What are your thoughts on this new concept?
