Will social media make or break medical conferences?

First paragraph: The conference ‘hashtag’ has become a regular addition to any advertising poster or programme. Social media technologies take many different forms including internet forums, social blogs, microblogs, wikis, podcasts and videos. Social media is cheap and accessible, and differentiated from ‘traditional’ media in quality, reach, frequency, usability, immediacy and permanence that enable anyone (even private individuals) to publish or access information often with minimal quality assurance. The use of social media at conferences, not just confined to health care, has exploded. In particular Twitter has become an established tool for pre-, intra- and post-conference communication