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New insights about social networks in the life sciences industry

Hype vs. hope on social networks

With half a billion Facebook members and 75 million Twitter users¹ speaking about products and opinions, there is an overload of stories about companies using  internet enabled social networks² ? or groups of people on a specifi c World Wide Web address who share, modify, and view information³ ? to reach consumers. These formidable numbers ? and a healthy dose of hype ?suggest that companies would do well to “tweet, friend, or get out of the way.” But in the life sciences industry, things are not that simple and the line between hype and hope is a thin one. On one side, mounting restrictions on communication with patients and physicians make access to these groups attractive^4,5 and 65 percent of surveyed life science professionals say their company is using or plans to use social networks in some capacity.

(see fi gure 1).^6,7 On the other hand, industry regulations limit interaction between life sciences companies and their customers, raising questions about the social networks’ usefulness, at least as a marketing channel.⁸ These questions may explain why more than one third of life sciences professionals say they have no plans to use online social networks in any capacity, (see fi gure 1), and of those that do, regulatory uncertainty is cited as the largest barrier.⁹

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