Health care blog watch: emerging trends in the blogosphere.

The concept of corporate blogging that Robert Scoble and Shel Israel wrote about in their 2006 treatise on the subject, Naked Conversations,1 has become not only practice for thousands of businesses but almost a necessity. Even pharmaceutical companies, which have long shied away from any kind of social marketing because of potential liability, understand that having the conventional, static Web site is just not good enough anymore in today’s digital age. The so-called blogosphere is not only “where it’s at” but also where businesses have to be if they want to connect with their customers. In the December 2007 issue of P&T (Volume 37, No. 12), I wrote about the launches of corporate blogs by Johnson & Johnson (J&J) (www.jnjbtw.com) and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) (www.alliconnect.com), two first-of-their-kinds for the pharmaceutical industry. Bloggers were abuzz at the time, especially over alliconnect, a branded site devoted to GSK’s over-the-counter weight-loss medication, orlistat (Alli). The Web site offered itself as a place for “conversation with us” about weight loss, but many wondered just how engaging these conversations could be, given the superregulated world of pharmaceuticals. Initially, alliconnect seemed to be charting new territory for a pharma company, especially in promoting transparency. One of its first posts addressed the adverse effects of Alli, generating a slew of comments from readers both recommending and criticizing the product. But alliconnect’s groundbreaking start in the blogosphere was followed by disappointing product sales, the resignation of its founding blogger, and the introduction of a new, more positive tone, with less discussion of side effects. Some saw these changes as potentially a move away from the openness that the blog had championed in addressing effects of treatment.