Today’s Pick: Pharma enters MySpace
As MaRS’ own Facebook community continues to grow, with over 130 members at last count, this tidbit about one pharma’s company’s foray into social networking is worth noting.
The August 15, 2007 issue of Pharmaceutical Executive includes an article about Reckitt Benckiser’s entry into MySpace, a rival to Facebook. The pharma company manufactures Suboxone (buprenorphine/naloxone), an in-office drug-dependence treatment and has created “Addiction 411” within the MySpace site to target 16-25 year-olds who may be struggling with prescription (opioid) drug abuse. For more on how pharma meets Web 2.0, see:
Marketing Where the Kids Are: Pharma surfaces on MySpace, Pharmaceutical Executive, August 15, 2007
Helen Kula sources and delivers market data and intelligence to entrepreneurs, high-growth companies and MaRS staff and advisors. She is an active member of Toronto’s information professional and librarian communities.
Interesting use of the destination (ie: it gives them a MySpace URL), but I doubt that it’s really an effective use of the technology and social media philosophy that MySpace is built on, given that users are not allowed to interact with each other.
Basically, the company seems to be trying to leverage the “cool” factor or gain some status by being in a hip space (although perhaps a little late in the game as MySpace continues to lose ground to Facebook). But it is no more than a regular, unimaginative website that happens to exist in a social media network.
Interesting tie-in to Maggie Fox’s post from a while back, “How Social Media is Changing Everything.”
I wonder what she would say about this effort…
Posted by: Cathy @ MaRS on August 16th, 2007 at 11:10 am