Doctors untrustworthy of the web
Posted Friday, June 13, 2008 at 8:11am in Media, PR General | Leave a Comment
PR Week is reporting (subscription required) that doctors don’t trust the information provided to them on pharmaceutical companies websites about their own products. The article says, “The research, commissioned by online medical resource OnMedica, found that only 27% of doctors trusted the information provided on official pharma company websites.”
Healthcare is an industry where the provision of correct information is paramount for obvious reasons. The web has changed things, however, and consumers are increasingly using the it to (rather dangerously) self-diagnose themselves. This scenario’s a little different and begs the question: why are over three quarters of doctors untrustworthy of information presented on an official website and, if this really the case, when do they trust the information presented to them?
Is it because doctors are technophobes who don’t trust any information presented to them on the web in general? Or is much deeper than that and is it a case of doctors not trusting information by pharma companies no matter which information delivery platform is used?
It’s rather worrying that there’s such a lack of mistrust between these two parties. What are the reasons behind it? I’m no healthcare PR expert; I know very little about the topic to be honest, but maybe the industry should be working on rebuilding this trust between themselves and their publics.
Europeans increasingly heart the mobile web
Posted Thursday, June 12, 2008 at 10:52am in PR General, Technology | 1 Comment
Us Europeans are using our our mobile phones to access the internet than ever before, according to a news article by the BBC. A survey by the GSM Association (GSMA) found that users accessing the mobile web increased by 75% from April 2007 to April 2008.
The article states, “Over the same period the numbers of 3G users doubled and the average price of data roaming services fell by 25%. The GSMA said there were now 112 million users of third generation (3G) mobile services in Europe - about 22.5% of all mobile users. By comparison 18.4% of US and Canadian mobile users are on 3G networks.”
As I’ve mentioned before, I continue to see ephinany moments as my Facebook friends discover they can update their Facebook statuses from their mobile phones. Sky-high data charges on users’ bills is beginning to become less of a worry as consumers become more educated and, of course, as carriers lower their charges.
This is obviously great news to the UK carriers who paid over £22 billion ($43 billion USD) in a bidding war for the 3G license. And is also a sign that PR and marketers should be experimenting and looking for new ways to harness this increasing trend. The newspaper industry seems to be capitalising by using mobile news sites as delivery mechanisms and new applications like Instapaper (very simple, yet very effective; a God send) are introduced.
UK internet users increasingly heart blogs
Posted Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at 6:29pm in Blogging, PR General | 1 Comment
The argument for the notion that Twitter is killing blogging was quashed today (well, in the UK at least) by Research Director of Hitwise, Robin Goad, who published new data that shows the number of UK visits to blogs is at an all-time high. In other words, blogs are receiving more traffic by people in the UK than ever before.
Robin says, “UK Internet visits to weblogs reached an all time high last week. As the chart below illustrates, Blogs and Personal Websites accounted for 1.19% of all UK traffic, equivalent to one in every 84 internet visits.”
Interestingly, in terms of growth rate, Robin also notes that UK traffic to blogs has increased (208%) much quicker than traffic to ‘News and Media’ sites (70%). Although, in terms of volume, traffic to the latter is still larger.
I think this data illustrates that blogs have a long way to go in terms of growth and readership. Some predicted their demise when Facebook hit the mainstream, and now that Twitter’s the social media darling similar thoughts have been aired also. Nick Denton seems to think blogs are in their infancy too. He said Jason Calacanis was “10 years too early” when he sold Weblogs Inc. to AOL for a reported $25m back in 2005. Time will tell.
In related news:
Neil Vineburg points to some research on US blog publisher and readership demographics featured by E-marketer. Interesting to see the age difference between the average blog writer and reader.
TWL is back. So are the Flackenhacks (maybe)
Posted Monday, June 9, 2008 at 12:49pm in Blogging, PR General | 1 Comment
The quasi-anonymous and fully retired blogger, …The Worlds Leading… (TWL) is back for one blog post and one blog post only. TWL’s looking to see if anyone’s up for a second installment of the Flackenhack Awards which took place in October last year. As TWL says in classic PR and marketing jargon, “We thought that a good first step would be to convene a meeting to scope out the parameters of this year’s event. Perhaps we could develop a framework within which to execute? A face-to-face interaction would be our preferred strategy for achieving our initial objectives.
“So we’re going down the pub to discuss. Wednesday 9th July, the Dog & Duck on Bateman Street from about 7.00pm. If you fancy sponsoring this year’s awards, or helping to organise them or just attending, then join us for a beer. We’re interested in any thoughts on how it might be bigger and even better in 2008.”
Such a shame that blog retired. The UK tech PR blogosphere scene is a much more empty place without him/her/them/it.
The Long Tail of Obama’s online fundraising
Posted Monday, May 26, 2008 at 3:04pm in PR General, Technology | 6 Comments
The Guardian’s sister Sunday newspaper, The Observer, yesterday ran a piece by Andrew Sullivan titled, “Barack Obama is master of the new Facebook politics” which details the fundraising antics of both Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton, as they both continue to battle out to take leadership of the US Democrat Party.
Perhaps surprisingly, the amount of money raised by Obama ($38m) was considerably more than that of Clinton ($6m) who, given who her husband is and was, has the biggest name in the Party. The reason behind this is because Obama has taken to a new democratic way of fundraising which follows the notion of The Long Tail theory.
The article quotes Peter Leyden of the New Politics Institute, who says, “Hillary built the best campaign that has ever been done in Democratic politics on the old model – she raised more money than anyone before her, she locked down all the party stalwarts, she assembled an all-star team of consultants and she really mastered this top-down, command-and-control type of outfit.”
What Clinton hasn’t done, however, is use the power of online ‘micro fundraising’ like Obama has by building online social spaces (using well-known social media sites) where the young can interact and donate money (no matter how small) to Obama’s campaign. Because of this, last month’s fundraising sum of $31m was donated all online and, more interestingly, 94 percent of it came from sums of $200 or less.
Clinton, on the other hand, relies on the old method where supporters have to persuade friends and colleagues to contribute the maximum donation allowance of $2,300, which may prove to be much more difficult in these economically turbulent times.
Expect similar initiatives taking place in the UK and elsewhere soon.