Unsurprisingly, younger adults under 35 are more likely to have cut their landlines, but the CDC also reports that the number of wireless-only households increased among all age groups. About half of all adults aged 25 to 29 now live in households that are wireless-only, though only 5.2% of adults over 65 have cut their landlines. Renters and adults who have roommates, by the way, are far more likely to live in households with only wireless phones than most other demographics.

For more detailed statistics, have a look at the full report here (PDF).

What Does This Mean for Developers?

For mobile developers, this is an interesting trend. While most developers tend to focus on applications that are meant to be used while on the road, the market for in-home apps that control appliances or allow you to program your DVR will only continue to grow over the next few years.

Trying to spread the word about the dangers of Salmonella-infected peanut butter forced the HHS, FDA, and CDC to get creative. Leveraging social media to spread the word, proved to be the point on which the agencies could quickly combine forces. According to Nextgov, the various health agencies gathered to brainstorm ideas, propose various forms of social media outreach, and collaborate on launching the campaign.

"We tried to use every available form of media," said Dick Stapleton, deputy director of the Web communications and the new media division at HHS.

The avenues employed by the agencies included blogs, texting, mobile versions of agency Web sites, online video from the FDA and CDC on YouTube, podcasts, XML files and RSS feeds including "CDC Emergency Preparedness and Response," social network outreach on sites like MySpace, a variety of Twitter entities like @FDArecalls and @CDCemergency, virtual worlds, and widgets. The various channels carried both breaking news as well as education information on Salmonella.

Previously, inter-agency collaboration was all but non-existent, as Stapleton explained to GovHealthIT:

"Traditionally, [HHS] is a very siloed organization, with the CDC, FDA and other agencies doing their own thing and the public left to go to individual agency pages to find out about what is going on," he said. "We have a lot of potential resources, but they are scattered."

Social media not only enabled the agencies to accelerate outreach, it made the health organizations more social, themselves, by introducing a means of collaborating among the formerly disjointed departments.

And while it's hard to pinpoint how many potential illnesses or deaths were prevented, it's safe to say that far more people were aware of the dangers of Salmonella-tainted peanut butter thanks to the social media efforts of these agencies.

Where Do We Go from Here?

Hopefully, this is just the first step - rapidly disseminating information - of many for incorporating Web 2.0 technologies into these agencies.

With continued adoption, one can easily imagine the possible advances in protecting the populous from disease before it happens - like employing technology similar to Google's flu trends combined with social graph information. And that's only one example.

Here's hoping the health agencies continue to break new ground - and continue to collaborate - for all of our sakes. That's when social media will truly become a way of life.