4 Stories About Social Media's Awesome Power

Timimi's second story about social media concerned Dick Berger, MD, who helped identify UT ligament split tears, where the ligament tears along the long axis like a stalk of celery. Many who suffer from it are not diagnosed properly at first, but once diagnosed, can be effectively treated.

Berger's most famous patient is Jayson Werth, a major-league baseball player who suffered a broken wrist in 2006. His UT ligament split tear went undetected and although he played again, Werth was thinking of quitting baseball because of the pain.

A friend suggested seeing Berger for a second opinion. After being diagnosed correctly and having the ligament repaired, Werth signed an $850,000 contract with the Philadelphia Phillies.

The Mayo marketing department tried to share the story with local media, but in Timimi's words, "We threw it and no one swung at it." Then, using a consumer-grade video camera, Mayo made a recording of Werth telling his story in his own words and posted it to the Mayo Clinic blog.

A few years later, Werth hit two home runs for the Phillies in the World Series. "We had the video, we had the blog post, and we had the transcript," Timimi says. The Rochester, Minnesota newspaper did a splash story on Werth's recovery, and the local TV station used Mayo's relatively poor-quality video for an on-air broadcast.

"It's not how it's captured," Timimi says. "It's the message that's the issue."

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