Tweeting the Meeting.

Twitter is a mobile social media microblogging service designed for instant online publication of short 280-character text-based messages known as tweets. Twitter's ability to rapidly circulate information and generate debate among its users has resulted in its application in arenas including politics, business, broadcasting, and academia. Fittingly, but not without controversy, Twitter use during major medical conferences has gained significant traction because of its ability to widely and rapidly disseminate information in real time(1,2) conferring a dramatic upside potential for medical education. Despite this rapid growth in social media utilization during major medical conferences, there is a paucity of data related to this in cardiology literature. This data report analyzes preliminary descriptive trends of Twitter use during 3 major cardiovascular meetings and evaluates its possible educational potential through a quantitative and qualitative analysis of conference-related tweets.