Have you seen the excellent write-up by Forrester Research of the famous Motrin Moms debacle? If not I’ll try to dig it out. Forrester (and the like) can be hopelessly abstract at times, but their post on that episode nailed it, as far as I can tell.

J&J also sponsors the Diabetes Hands Foundation, under which the TuDiabetes and EsTuDiabetes social networks are run.

Some online pharmacies, such as American Diabetes Wholesale, are also adding social networking elements into their sites. ADW has discussion fora, expert columns, and recipes.

One issue with Big Pharma getting directly involved in social media is that they are a priori NOT vendor-neutral. J&J has promised CWD that that community will remain vendor-neutral, but if Big Pharma is to become more actively involved in social networking, its sponsored communities will have to become less vendor-neutral, and more our-product-is-the-best-and-only-product. This is not helpful to a patient who may require pharmaceuticals from multiple laboratories, often because one or more of the required drugs is unique to one pharmaceutical company (e.g. Byetta, Symlin) and the rest of the patient’s drugs may not be manufactured by that company (especially where cancer drugs and “orphan drugs” are concerned).

What I am seeing useful are cases where someone from the manufacturer (often a sales rep or a support rep) joins a social network, answers questions on his company’s products when they come up in the network, note the availability of those products where it is appropriate to do so, and explicitly states his professional/fiduciary interest in each post related to his employer’s products. This allows a company to provide additional channels through which to provide support and customer service (though at a less-specific level than through the manufacturer’s direct support channels), though not necessarily a way through which to capture the information to an individual customer’s account.