Top Pharma Tweeters: Tracking Pharma’s Use of Twitter in Real-Time

About a year ago, I published a chart that looked like the one to the right in a post titled "Pharma Finds its Voice on  Twitter."

This functional but not-so-pretty graphic featured known pharma companies actively tweeting, their Twitter handle, the date they joined, and the number of following, followers, and updates.

The pharma community response was positive, and everyone seemed to appreciate having a central resource for this type of info. The problem was, of course, that as soon as we compiled the data, it was outdated. Things change quickly in the Twitterverse!

In addition to that static chart from days of yore, other bloggers have evaluated pharma’s use of Twitter …

• Most recently, Tweeter Extraordinaire Shwen Gwee presented “Twitterama II” at the Digital Pharma East conference. See this post for some tips and takeaways.
• Referenced in Shwen's presentation was Silja Chouquet's (of WhyDotPharma) amazingly thorough analysis of how pharma co’s use Twitter.
• Fabio Gratton of Ignite Health and #FDASM fame had created this snapshot of 20 pharma Twitter feeds http://bit.ly/ez1dA
• Pixels and Pills’ HealthTweeder is an elegant, creative, dynamic view of the broader healthcare dialog as it relates to disease categories.
• And Jonathan Richman’s healthcare social media wiki is a popular resource for a broad list of pharma/healthcare companies using Twitter.

In short, there continues to be a ton of interest from the industry in what pharma is doing with Twitter. Maybe that’s because it seems Twitter is the most active social channel for pharma for the time being – especially at the corporate communications level. It’s a quick and easy way to connect with a company's many different audiences online, and keeping things unbranded keeps it low-risk.

So we thought we’d take our original static list one step further. (Keep reading … this is where it gets exciting!)

Today we’re introducing the world to what we’ve lovingly dubbed “Tweetpharm.” Tweetpharm is an interactive infographic that tracks pharmaceutical companies’ use of Twitter in real time. Tweetpharm aggregates data from pharma Twitter accounts, and serves it up two ways: (1) as an easy-to-read, sort-able dashboard and (2) as an interactive “visualizer.”

(View the press release online here, or if you’re already intrigued enough to dive right into Tweetpharm and start playing, go for it.)

If you're still with me, here are a few screen captures to give you a taste of some of Tweetpharm's features ...

Number of Followers

The dashboard can be sorted alphabetically (its default) and also by the number of Followers, low to high or high to low. In this example, when this screen capture was taken (11/1/10), the five pharma companies with the largest number of followers were @Pfizer_news, @Novartis, @Roche_com, @GSKUS, and @GEHealthcare: 

Number Following

The Tweetpharm Dashboard also can be sorted by the number of accounts followed, from low to high or high to low. @GEHealthcare is following the most accounts currently.

Highlighting pharma's reticence to follow ("does that constitute an endorsement???"), there are ten pharma companies in the list that follow less than ten accounts.

Volume of Tweets 

In addition, you can view who's sent out the most tweets. This "top five" reads a little differently, with @JNJComm reaching the top with its 1,140 tweets.

And while you're reading and sorting all this data, you can always roll over any account for its latest tweet:

The Tweetpharm Visualizer
So the dashboard is a great way to view and sort data. But the visualizer is where the data comes to life in a fun bubble-like infographic. Using the same data, you can view the lead tweeters, following, and followers in a dynamic new way that looks like this (this example highlights the largest number of tweets in the biggest bubbles):

Sort-able, Scalable, Useful

So the next time you're wondering who is leading the pack in following, followers, or number of tweets ... or who is lagging sadly behind ... or if you just want to tickle your fancy with the bubbles a bit ... visit Tweetpharm for the quick answer to those questions and a lot more. We hope it becomes a valuable resource for you, especially if you are:

• A pharma or similarly-regulated company looking to launch a Twitter account
• Developing or evolving your own Twitter engagement strategy
• Someone who already tweets on behalf of pharma ... track your rank and understand how others approach the channel
• Looking to see if companies follow others, and how many they follow
• A legal or regulatory reviewer, a blogger or other industry observer needing a quick reference of pharma Twitter accounts
• Bored and/or curious about how pharma companies are using Twitter - especially at the corporate level (Okay, if you're not from pharma and you've read this post this far,  you must REALLY be bored

Criteria for Inclusion
We made every effort to make Tweetpharm a comprehensive list of the main English-language U.S. and global Twitter presences of major pharma/biotech and some medical device companies. With the recent explosion of pharma Twitter accounts we had to stop somewhere, so we chose to feature only corporate accounts at this time. For this phase, we also eliminated accounts if they had zero tweets (there are suprisingly many!), or if they represented a specific brand, campaign, or disease category niche. Finally, we chose not to include accounts tweeting about jobs or patient assistance as we just felt it wouldn't be an apples-to-apples comparison until we built in more functionality.
 
If there are any accounts that, based on the above inclusion and exclusion criteria, should have been included, please drop me a line here (using Comments) and accept our apologies. Our goal is to keep Tweetpharm relevant and accurate for the long-haul.

Beyond the Numbers
We understand Twitter and Tweetpharm are more than just numbers; there's a tremendous story to tell behind this data. And we have a lot of ideas on how to make it bigger, better, broader, and more useful over time. We could expand the list. We could show trends. We could show engagement and influence scores. We could show connections. The possibilities for Tweetpharm are truly endless. (If you’re at a company or agency that is driven by innovation, you’ll understand why we feel our work is never done ... there are always ways to make things better and more exciting!)

Anyway ... we hope to roll out some new features soon.

Meantime, we’d love for you to use Tweetpharm to your heart’s content. Tell your friends. Tell the folks that manage (or want to manage) your Twitter presence.  And for goodness' sake, please tell us your feedback and ideas!

Thanks for reading.

Tweetpharm away!