Article analyzes success metrics on Facebook and impact of Shares on performance.

http://edgerankchecker.com/blog/2011/11/comments-4x-more-valuable-than-likes/

Who's Really Putting Patients First?

Top six brands in an evaluation of patient support programs: Enbrel (Amgen/Pfizer), Betaseron (Bayer), Gleevec (Novartis), Januvia (Merck), Victoza (Novo Nordisk), and Rebif (EMD Serono).

http://www.mmm-online.com/whos-really-putting-patients-first/article/213088/

The Myth of Adverse Event Reporting

Article breaks down pharma's most common fears of social media and why the fears are unfounded. Could be good ammo for fearful clients.

http://www.doseofdigital.com/2009/01/myth-adverse-event-reporting/

Quoted from the article:

1. Afraid to give up control of the brand
Surprise, you already lost control of your brand. Conversations are going on without you already.

2. I can't track it like physician-level prescription data
Social media is no harder to track or correlate with sales than any other online program done in healthcare.

3. Older people use my products and they don't use social media
This simply isn't the case anymore. [...] In the US, there are over 4 million users over the age of 35 on Facebook, and that's just Facebook.

4. Adverse Event reporting
How often do posts include adverse events? Nielsen decided to take a look at this rather than simply assume it was "a lot". Nielsen looked at Yahoo Health boards and took 500 postings. Of these, only 1 contained enough information to qualify as an adverse event that needed to be reported. That's 0.2%.

Suppose for a moment there were several adverse events that need to be reported. How often do they need to be reported? The FDA is pretty clear on this. For new drugs, reports need to be filed quarterly for three years. After that, it's annually. For "serious and unexpected" events, these have to be reported within 15 days. However, there's a pretty high threshold for an adverse event to be considered "serious and unexpected."

Nielsen: Tablet and eReader adoption accelerated among older users, women in Q2

Mobile connected device adoption picked up among women and older consumers in the second quarter of 2011, according to new findings from market research firm Nielsen. In the second quarter last year, tablets and eReaders were owned largely by those under the age of 35. The market has shifted significantly over the past year however, and consumers 35 and older accounted for more than half of tablet and eReader owners last quarter. 54% of tablet owners in the second quarter were over the age of 35, up from 38% in the second quarter of 2010, and eReader ownership among consumers 35 and older jumped to 65% last quarter from 55% in the June quarter a year prior. Where gender is concerned, eReader adoption among women ballooned to 61% in the second quarter of this year, up from 46% in the same quarter last year. Smartphone adoption inched up from 47% in the second quarter of 2010 to 50% last quarter, and tablet adoption jumped from 39% to 43% over the same period. Another chart from Nielsen’s report follows below.

Read

Email client popularity - June 2011

One in five emails are now opened on a mobile device.

http://www.campaignmonitor.com/stats/email-clients/

The Social Layer: Six Thoughts On Where Google Plus Is Going

Interesting speculations about the future of Google+ from Edelman Digital. Concise run-down of some of Google+s features as well.

http://www.edelmandigital.com/2011/07/26/the-social-layer-six-thoughts-on-where-google-plus-is-going/