Pharmaceutical Industry Slow to Embrace New Media: Feeds & Aggregators
by Mark S. Senak
Eye On FDA
The pharmaceutical industry has been slow to embrace new media. There are a number of good reasons for this. Any highly regulated industry, such as the pharmaceutical industry, has to be careful and concerned when considering new media strategies. That doesn't mean that they should consider them at all, however, and that is a good topic for a posting in and of itself.
But in the meantime, I want to talk about feeds. Not long ago, the FDA introduced RSS feeds to its Web site. For those of you not familiar, a feed allows a person to subscribe to your output.
As many of you know, Eye on FDA allows you to subscribe either by email or by subscribing to a feed. A growing number of readers are subscribing by feed rather than email. A fan of Eye on FDA (and I appreciate you all) can, instead of email, choose an aggregator that pulls together the information that he or she wants to read.
For example, I use Google Reader (GOOG). I have chosen several outlets that put out information in the form of news releases and have subscribed to their feed through Google Reader. Then I go to my Google Reader page and there waiting for me are news releases from all of my favorite sources, so that I can read them in my own personal sort of newspaper. The FDA not only has this service, but so does PhRMA. In fact, PhRMA has a tutorial on their site about RSS feeds.
But in looking at other organizations and pharmaceuticals, one doesn't see the same offering, generally speaking. GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) offers a feed, but many others that I checked do not. That is an oversight. Some offer emails - that is very yesterday. Investors, in particular, would like to subscribe to the press releases of companies in which they invest as would analysts, among others.
It is time for pharmaceutical companies to look at how they are communicating in the new media milieu. This is just one aspect of that. Anyone who is just posting press releases the old fashioned way, and sending them over the wires, is behind the times. It would be like only advertising on radio, when there is television!
This is just one step, among many, that pharmas need to take in new media.
Source: EyeOnFDA.com
RELATED READING:
- FDA's $50,000 Mystery Question
- Revising FDA Advisory Committee Criteria
- FDA Failing to Acknowledge Image Problems
_____________________
Eye On FDA
The pharmaceutical industry has been slow to embrace new media. There are a number of good reasons for this. Any highly regulated industry, such as the pharmaceutical industry, has to be careful and concerned when considering new media strategies. That doesn't mean that they should consider them at all, however, and that is a good topic for a posting in and of itself.
But in the meantime, I want to talk about feeds. Not long ago, the FDA introduced RSS feeds to its Web site. For those of you not familiar, a feed allows a person to subscribe to your output.
As many of you know, Eye on FDA allows you to subscribe either by email or by subscribing to a feed. A growing number of readers are subscribing by feed rather than email. A fan of Eye on FDA (and I appreciate you all) can, instead of email, choose an aggregator that pulls together the information that he or she wants to read.
For example, I use Google Reader (GOOG). I have chosen several outlets that put out information in the form of news releases and have subscribed to their feed through Google Reader. Then I go to my Google Reader page and there waiting for me are news releases from all of my favorite sources, so that I can read them in my own personal sort of newspaper. The FDA not only has this service, but so does PhRMA. In fact, PhRMA has a tutorial on their site about RSS feeds.
But in looking at other organizations and pharmaceuticals, one doesn't see the same offering, generally speaking. GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) offers a feed, but many others that I checked do not. That is an oversight. Some offer emails - that is very yesterday. Investors, in particular, would like to subscribe to the press releases of companies in which they invest as would analysts, among others.
It is time for pharmaceutical companies to look at how they are communicating in the new media milieu. This is just one aspect of that. Anyone who is just posting press releases the old fashioned way, and sending them over the wires, is behind the times. It would be like only advertising on radio, when there is television!
This is just one step, among many, that pharmas need to take in new media.
Source: EyeOnFDA.com
RELATED READING:
- FDA's $50,000 Mystery Question
- Revising FDA Advisory Committee Criteria
- FDA Failing to Acknowledge Image Problems
_____________________
posted by Nico at
4:37 PM
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