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Pharma's Facebook: social media is one of the biggest success stories of the Web 2.0 era. Peter Houston explores how LinkedIn is helping pharma get in on the act.

Article Excerpt
Social media is big news. From Facebook to Twitter, individuals are embracing the opportunity to participate in online publishing at an unprecedented rate. Communities of users interact globally, minute-to-minute within huge databases of content that they themselves create.

The social media revolution has even spread to the pathologically-cautious pharma market. According to Lisa Flaiz of digital agency Razorfish, several pharma companies are experimenting with branded Facebook pages and YouTube channels.

But don't get too excited; pharma-sponsored patient communities are a long way from being ubiquitous on the internet. The industry still can't quite get its collective head around the removal of the 'learned intermediary' and is definitely not ready to turn the supply of drug information over to the patient community.

So what good is social media to the pharma sector? Well, if we leave marketing and patient education to one side and assume that there's no real value in a 'Texas Hold Em' tournament on Facebook, professional networking is the most exciting Web 2.0 activity for pharmaceutical executives.

Dominating the online professional networking space is LinkedIn, the world's largest network with more than 35 million members worldwide; 9 million of which are in Europe. LinkedIn is basically a database of individual profiles. Users are provided with the tools to manage and maintain their profile, connect to others on the network, share knowledge, expertise...

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