Pharma on Twitter: J&J Tweets the Most; Novartis Has Most Followers, Abbott Not Out of the Gate Yet

(MoneyWatch)  InTouch Solutions, a pharma marketing agency, has produced a handy grid listing all the top pharma company Twitter streams and offering some stats on each one. Boehringer Ingelheim and Novartis are the oldest tweeters, but Johnson & Johnson has Twittered the most -- 419 posts, by the InTouch count.

Of the top 10 companies, Abbott Labs, Wyeth and Merck still don't have accounts. That's not surprising in Wyeth's case -- it's about to disappear under Pfizer. Merck is supposed to survive as the acquirer of Schering-Plough so why does it not have a Twitter account? Could it be that's not a priority as it figures out ways to digest Schering?

Abbott, of course, has no excuse.

Other accounts of note:

• Allergan is currently inactive.
• You need permission to follow Bayer's Tweet stream.
• Novartis has the most followers -- 3040.
• Sanofi Voices has the fewest followers, 153.

Perhaps Sanofi is unpopular because it has split its audience across three streams? The other two are Sanofi Pasteur and Sanofi-Aventis TV.

• BNET's previous coverage of Big Pharma and social media:
• FDA's Web 2.0 Hearing Recalls Its Unintentionally Hilarious Panel From 1996: "What Is the Internet?"
• Pfizer Plans 100-Strong Twitter Army to Fight "Bad Rap"; Imposter Poses a Problem
• Novartis, Boehringer Start Using Twitter Accounts
• Why Drug Companies Prefer Twitter Over Blogs
• A Q&A With J&J's Joe Natale on Why Pharma Stays Stuck in the Web's Past