Who Loves Ya Baby? The TOP 5 Blogs According to Industry Readers

As many readers of the Pharma Blogosphere^TM blog know, back in February we hosted the First Ever Pharma Blogosphere reader survey. A sampling of results of this survey have already been published on this blog (see "Industry Bias in the Pharma Blogosphere" and "Pharma Blogosphere Survey Results - Who and Why?").

The full results of the survey will be published in the April, 2007 issue of Pharma Marketing News and presented at the Spring 2007 Healthcare Blogging Summit 2007 being held in Las Vegas on April 29. (I better get my ass in gear to get ready for that!).

In this installment I present some data showing the top 5 pharma blogs ranked by survey respondents who said they were employed at pharmaceutical companies. Recall that blogs were ranked according to Readability (layout, ease of reading and finding information), Usefulness (for keeping readers aware of the issues), and Credibility (accuracy of information). The results are shown in the following slide.

Note: N=43 industry readers; shows top five blogs in each category; only blogs with more than 5 respondent ratings were considered.

Some Take-aways
Only three blogs -- In the Pipeline, EyeOnFDA, and Pharma Marketing Blog -- made the "Industry Top 5" in each category. Props to In the Pipeline for being #1 in Usefulness and Credibility, and #2 in Readability!

Surprisingly, Drug Wonks was considered the most readable, but did not make the Top 5 in either of the other 2 categories. I reveal more about that in the upcoming Pharma Marketing News article.

Sorry, Peter, Question Authority -- popular as it might be among all readers -- did not make the "Industry Top 5" in any category! But I will say this: Industry readers thought that Question Authority was more supportive of the industry than did non-industry readers! In fact, it was second on that list (behind Pharma Marketing Blog) of blogs that the industry thought supportive. Perhaps if the survey was done over again today, industry respondents would have a different opinion! Perhaps more closely aligned with a view expressed on CafePharma; namely, "This Rost guy is a Michael Moore crony that is an industry and medical community outcast that has nothing better to do then sit at his computer all day long blogging about things he knows little about, blowing things out of proportion, and surfing porn."

Caveats
Kind in mind that this survey covered only 22 blogs. Today the field is much bigger! Also, several blogs were very new when the survey was run and, consequently, may not have had enough history to be properly judged.

There will be another Pharma Blogosphere Reader survey in the Fall. Stay tuned!