Hmmm...Ah! I Love the Smell of Pharma Blogosphere in the Morning!

"What do you know about surfing major? You're from goddamn New Jersey!"

We former New Yorkers living in the Philly area get a kick out locals who brag about "going down the shore," by which they mean the New Jersey shore. When we say the beaches in New York are better than those in Jersey, they stare at us blankly and exclaim, "New York has beaches?" Duh!

New York or New Jersey, surfing there sucks!

But I love surfing here in the Pharma Blogosphere, especially in the morning!

First, I look over there in the right hand to see what's going on at Pharma Marketing Blog and Pharma Marketing podcastville.

At Pharma Marketing Blog, for example, you can Meet Dr. Andree Bates, Marketing ROI Expert. Dr. Bates' glamour shot appears on the left.

Then I try CafePharma's Pharmagather, which tells who has posted what most recently. Sometimes, however, this unnerves me because I get the urge to respond to the first item on the list although it may not be the best.

That's when I switch to PharmaCentral PageFlake, where I can browse through many posts on a blog-by-blog basis rather than on a FILO basis the way Pharmagather is set up.

My personal favorite blogs are arranged alphabetically in the Inner Planet list on the right. I go to that list when I want to check up on a specific blog.

Anyway, that's my morning routine in case you were interested!

'Round the Sphere: Dirty Tightie Whities and Wailing on Wonks!

Pretty soon I'm off to my son's high school graduation and there's no time to start anything productive, so I'll just make this quick post about what has caught my attention this week 'round the old Pharma Blogosphere.

First those Tightie Whities
Aside from being recognized as one of The 50 Best Business Blogs by The Times of London, Pharmalot is also recognized -- at least by me -- for sporting a great new look and crisp little graphics. I especially like the dirty tightie whities Ed Silverman used to illustrate a recent post about the problems faced by Acomplia (aka Zimulti).

Ed suggests that we invest in underwear makers. I would point out, however, that most underwear makers are in China or India and run sweatshops. Based on a recent report --- see "Drugmakers Need New Business Model" -- many pharmaceutical companies may need to offshore their business as well if they are to remain viable. "Companies must expand their pipelines by looking to countries such as India and China, where research is burgeoning, and the industry must redesign the drug development process," the report said.

Wailing on Wonks
Meanwhile, the PR Wonks at Drug Wonks are being wailed on from the left and from the right and all over the place! The funny thing is, I pointed out the Wonks conflicts of interest way back in February (see "Drug Wonks are PR Wonks"), but that tree falling in the forest made no sound.

Now you can't swing a Kitty without hitting a post dissing Pitts and or Goldberg, the 2 most prolific drug Wonks. I think CL Psych started it with the post "Welcome to the PR Machine." Since then, others have taken up the clarion call.

Most recently, Jim Edwards over at BrandweekNRX Wailed on Wonks for their attacks on Moore (see "Why DrugWonks' Campaign to Demonize Michael Moore Will Fail"). But there's much more to Jim's post than anti-Drug Wonkisms. He actually is making a point about our health insurance industry that Moore never even touched on! Read it and weep.

Peter Rost over at Question Authority went so far as to ask "Is Big Pharma Secretly Taking Over the Blog World?" It may be less of a conspiracy theory than it sounds. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal profiled a company that can improve your reputation on the Web. One method -- drown out the bad stuff with counter-content that says you're a saint! By the looks of pharmagather, that seems to be the methodology employed by Drug Wonks, which makes one small post after another all day long. Of course, Pharmalot does the same thing, so I guess one balances the other!

'Round the Sphere: Pharmalot Goes Green, Pharma Gossip Goes BBQ, Drug Wonks Just Go Berserk!

Ed Silverman has been busy over the weekend. Like most of us he probably spent some quality time with his family and lawn, but be also managed to launch a makeover of his blog, Pharmalot.


Pharmalot now sports a new green glow and offers several new features and improvements, according to Ed:

- More visibility for comments;
- More links to the rest of the Internet;
- Easier to find entries, and new topic pages;
- Enhanced archives;
- Easier-to-follow comment discussions;
- Smaller file sizes;
- Easier-to-use Anonymous Tips link;
- Lighter colors and bigger type;
- No mediciney taste!

I especially like the new color scheme, larger font, and the fact that recent comments are highlighted in the right hand column. I predict that this will encourage more people to post comments, which will make Ed even busier!

There's also a calendar that allows you to look at archives by day, rather than by month. This is very useful since Ed makes several posts per day.

Anyway, good luck Ed!

Meanwhile, Jack Friday over at PharmaGossip also initiated a bit of a makeover. Insider, however, only went so far as to pimp the logo as soon below:

Will we see more PharmaGossip logo variations a la Google?

Have you used Cafe Pharma's Pharmagather lately? If you have, you will have noticed something weird. Here's a screen shot I took this morning (click on it to enlarge it):

Notice how many times DrugWonks appears. You might think these are all new posts because that's how pharmagather works -- it lists posts from several blogs in reverse chronological order. This helps us find the most recent posts mad in the Pharma Blogosphere^TM.

But if you look more closely at the DrugWonks entries, most of them are labeled "posted 75 minutes ago." Actually, most of these were posted several days ago!

So, what's the big deal? Well, just as on search engine pages, visitors to Pharmagather are not going to scroll down too far to access posts made to other blogs. DrugWonks is dominating the top positions on the Pharmagather page even though there aren't that many recent posts being made to the blog! This unfairly hogs the limelight.

This could have been a fluke, but I just checked and again DrugWonks dominates the top positions.

Either DrugWonks has found a way to game the system used by Pharmagather -- such as "republishing" old posts -- or there is something wrong with DrugWonks' feed.

Whatever the problem, I wish Pharmagather would fix it!