Oakwood Hospital let a nurse go for posting remarks about a suspected cop-killer in her care. Per the dismissal:

“As healthcare providers, we have a legal and ethical responsibility to protect patient privacy and we are bound by HIPAA rules and regulations to ensure that we do so. All of our employees are trained and expected to protect patient information. This means keeping details confidential that might make it easy to identify a patient even if his or her name has not been revealed. That’s why disciplinary action, even termination, may result from sharing information about patients inappropriately in any public forum or setting.

While we cannot discuss specific details regarding any current or former employee, we all have a legal and ethical responsibility to put our personal opinions aside and provide the care required for any patient who has entrusted us with their health.”

The kicker was that the patient’s name was not revealed by the nurse, but by the news media. Where is the line between personal and professional in healthcare? Does this imply that HIPAA extends beyond the borders of the hospital but even into the homes of practitioners?

The NY Times reports today about the lose a friend, gain a whopper campaign:

While many trivial actions do prompt Facebook to post an alert to all your friends… striking someone off your list simply is not one of them.

It is this policy that Burger King ran afoul of this month with its “Whopper Sacrifice” campaign, which offered a free hamburger to anyone who severed the sacred bonds with 10 of the friends they had accumulated on Facebook. Facebook suspended the program because Burger King was sending notifications to the castoffs letting them know they’d been dropped for a sandwich (or, more accurately, a tenth of a sandwich).

The campaign, which boasted of ending 234,000 friendships, is history now — Burger King chose to end it rather than tweak it to fit Facebook’s policy…

The ad, which proclaims a Whopper is stronger than friendship, is the first I’ve seen involving the de-leveraging of social networks.

I had thought, back in the day, Facebook did alert one to the changes in tides of friendships so I understand the nature of the policy: one’s social network should only grow.  But it does underscore how loose those bounds are: by Burger King’s math, every facebook friend is worth about $.25

But I was fascinated by Facebook’s new ad system and the data I was able to find. For example, you can now target ads based on gender, location, and employment info — pretty slick for an online yearbook site.

Here’s some data I collected first hand about the demographics of who is on FB:

50 years +: 478,640
40-49 : 613,600
30-39 : 1,979,320
23-29 : 6,594,820
18-22 : 11,062,560
under 18 : 4,129,040

For those playing at home, that’s 24 million people total, with 87.5% under 30 but less than half “college-aged” — the population the site was due to serve.

Project the data 4-5 years from now, and you’ll have a population more like 50 million, with a larger chunk of 20/30’s graduates:

50 years +: 1,092,240
40-49 : 1,979,320
30-39 : 6,594,820
23-29 : 11,062,560
18-22 : 22,125,120
under 18 : 8,258,080

Estimates (obviously) 

But that’s assuming they do no aggressive advertising amongst AARP members.
So while I’m sure the general ads for skateboards, Mountain Dew, and Noxema will continue, my guess is each population will soon be getting their own targeted ads. And this is the genius of social network: the growth rate is exponential, but predictable. In 10 years, who knows — 100million? 200million?

NBC would kill for that kind of market share.