The Health Wisdom Blog™ (by OrganizedWisdom)

eMarketer Says Pharma Failing at Web 2.0

In case you didn't see this research from eMarketer:

DESPITE ACCOUNTING FOR AN EVER-INCREASING share of online ad spending, the pharmaceutical industry is still failing to embrace the Web 2.0 strategies that could help it better engage consumers looking for health care assistance, according to eMarketer research.

The new study, "Pharmaceutical Marketing Online: Stuck in Web 1.5," projected that the pharmaceutical category--which includes hospitals, drug companies and other health care services--will account for 5% of Internet advertising by 2011, or $2.2 billion. Last year the industry was responsible for $820 million, or 4.9%, and is on track to ring in $975 million this year, or 4.5% of total Web spend.

But most of that money is still going to traditional Web 1.0 ventures that provide only limited interactions with users. "[By] restricting their brand sites to simple online information centers, pharma marketers are missing opportunities to engage consumers and boost compliance," the study said.

The study's author, eMarketer senior analyst Lisa Phillips, said Pharma's slow adoption of Web 2.0 strategies like blogs, social networks and broadband video can be attributed to its conservative approach to advertising in general and to government restrictions.

Read the full article at Online Media Daily here.

The Difference Between Web 2.0 and Health 2.0 Movement

Healthcare blogger Scott Shreve, MD has a well thought out post today that does a great job of outlining the differences between Health 1.0 and 2.0 and outlines how the Health 2.0 movement differs from Web 2.0. See the charts below and click here to read his complete post which is well worth the read.

Why Ning And The Commoditization of Social Networking Matters

Not long ago companies like Blogger (now owned by Google), Sixapart, and Wordpress forever changed the Web by making it easy and virtually free for anyone to create their own blog and become an online publisher.  After only a few years blog search engine Technorati is tracking over 70,000,000 blogs!

Today, at least two new companies, Ning and KickApps, are evolving the Web even more by making it just as easy for anyone to quickly and inexpensively (FREE!) create their own social network on any topic.

Social networking has been around as long as blogging, but only within the last year have these new turn-key software solutions made it plug-n-play simple for anyone (or any company) to create their own networking communities.  For years, people have been creating Yahoo! Groups, and leveraging the power of MySpace and now Facebook.  But people have little control in these walled gardens and they make it difficult to customize their services.  (Yes, even with Facebook Apps).

Ning and KickApps on the other hand have leveled the playing field yet again and as a result the social network has been commoditized.  In fact, in the past few months tens of thousands of people have launched their own social networks.  Ning alone now boasts over 80,000 communities created since they opened up their platform a few months ago with more than 5,500 new social networks created in the past 10 days!

With the commoditization of social networking we are about to see a lot more niche communities launch in the coming weeks/months/years.  The question is, how will this impact all those companies who are spending a lot of money and resources to build their own proprietary/closed online networks?

Web 2.0 continues to make it easy for anyone to publish.  Now it's just as easy to create your own network, open or closed.  You don't need a budget.  You don't need servers.  And you don't need any technical ability. It truly is a flat world for social networking.

This means that the power of social networking is open to your local lyme disease foundation, or the regional network of nurse practitioners. You can create a temporary community for a friend's fund raiser, or compete with the big social networking platforms to create an environment more tailored to the needs of your group. You are now in control and can create any social network you want.

This is going to have a major impact on many companies in the Health 2.0 space as well as the Web overall.  Over the past 18 months we have seen the launch of dozens of niche social networking communities in the health sector focusing on everything from MS and ALS (PatientsLikeMe.com), to more comprehensive health communities like DailyStrength.org.  We've also seen millions of dollars be invested in companies like Eons.com focusing on the boomer market.  And over the coming months we'll see many more new companies launch to help bring new solutions to healthcare.

When OrganizedWisdom first launched we billed ourselves as the "first social network for health" with a mission of organizing all the world's best health wisdom.  We quickly realized that building a walled garden community was not the solution and over the past few months we dramatically evolved our strategy for a relaunch this fall (we're in private alpha right now). If you pay attention to OrganizedWisdom.com, you may have noticed that several months ago we stopped building new technology on the live site.  That's because we learned some valuable lessons early and quickly saw that we needed to make big changes to improve our service, stay competitive long-term, and tap into the power of a world where people are sharing such great wisdom across thousands of blogs and now social networks, just like they have in online forums for so many years.  The changes we are making are not merely technological.  They are about adding value to a world where everyone has access to great technology.

For companies like ours, and many others working hard to bring better solutions to people to help manage their health, there is still a significant need for better information, services, solutions.  The opportunity remains to continue to innovate, focus on quality, and add value in a commoditized technology world.

Is Today's Internet Killing Our Culture? Why Human Intermediaries Are Essential In A Web 2.0 World.

For anyone interested in social media, the concept of the Wisdom of Crowds, or the meaning of a flat world, we highly recommend watching this presentation by author Andrew Keen as part of the Authors@Google series.  Mr. Keen discusses his book "The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture" and he makes a compelling argument for the value of intermediaries in a Web 2.0 world.

Over the past year as we've been building OrganizedWisdom to help guide people to safe, inspirational and credible health information, we've been thinking a lot about this issue and figuring out the best way to tap into the power of people sharing their own stories and recommendations. 

The biggest issue has been with figuring out the best way to organize all of the great wisdom being shared across the web, and determining the role our editors, guides and medical reviewers in helping curate all of this information. 

These are some of the questions we been dealing with (and continue to deal with) since the beginning: What rules need to be established to guide people to quality information? How do we protect people from spam?  What role should editors play?  What types of content should be considered user-generated? Is a doctor-video on YouTube user-generated? Should we include links to wisdom that are also promoting a specific product or service? And so on...

Mr. Keen makes some important statements in this presentation about the essential need for intermediaries in a world where everyone has essentially acquired their own "printing press". 

To paraphrase, he says in the Web 2.0 world, everyone is able to publish themselves. You don't have to have programming skills to be a blogger.  You don't need to have gone to recording school to produce a video.  Web 2.0 makes it very simple to create and distribute because it does away with the middleman.  And according to many who evangelize the value of Web 2.0, the middleman is bad, corrupt. Gatekeepers are bad.

But, Mr. Keen argues Web 2.0 is not a viable economy because we need middlemen.  We need the expert. Whether in marketing, creativity, or content creation, the middleman helps discover the best talent and polishes their work.  The intermediaries are the core players in any media system whether Web 1.0, 2.0, 3.0. If we do away with the intermediaries we are undermining media because we are undermining talent.  He warns the reality is that talent is scarce.  The core value of the ecosystem in media is finding and distributing this talent.  The ecosystem is HUMAN.  The only way of discovering and polishing the best of the best is a human function. Not an algorithm.

There is a lot we agree with in Mr. Keen's thinking.  That is not to say we are not proponents of everyone having the ability to publish, and create, and share.  We just agree that there is great value in helping organize, structure, and lend credibility to the best of what the crowds are creating.

Because this flattened media is more open to corruption and lends itself to illegitimate characters gaming the system to their advantage, we are seeing the proliferation of clutter, spam, and junk mixed in with all of the greatness, inspiration and wisdom.  How do we know what information is great/trustworthy/credible in a Web 2.0 world being infiltrated by people who are using the same virtues of open media to sell products, manipulate or satiate their ego? 

Mr. Keen makes a defense of a media with formal, official, and transparent gatekeepers because he believes "Web 2.0 is too easy to game.  To easy to play around with.  Too many sites are too easy to fix."

"The problem with this flattened world," says Mr. Keen, "is when you do away with formal gatekeepers, the problem with web 2.0 media is it is increasingly becoming one long commercial break. Increasingly hard to distinguish between paid content and free content.   The whole thing becomes one long advert.   It is becoming more difficult to distinguish between content and advertising."

We are seeing many of these issues being worked out as communities like Wikipedia institute more guidelines, editorial controls and moderation.  But there is clearly a lot more to be done in order to weed out the junk. Social media and collaboration are incredibly powerful, but as the Web expands it is becoming more clear that humans are an essential ingredient in helping monitor, organize and guide us to the very best wisdom of crowds.