AstraZeneca's New Blog Is Slammed by Critics

(MoneyWatch)  AstraZeneca (AZN) has launched a blog -- AZ Health Connections -- and the critics don't like it. There have only been five posts on it since Oct. 16, but already PharmExec has declared that the blog "falls flat" and Eye on FDA says the posts "leave little upon which to engage."

The criticisms are harsh given that AZ blog editor Earl Whipple has still got his training wheels on.

However, the haters do have a point when it comes to pharma company blogs generally: Firms shy away from controversy but controversy is the blogosphere's raison d'être. unable to overcome that central contradiction, pharma blogs are often pallid affairs.

Companies also find them difficult to keep going. GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) abandoned a blog for its diet drug Alli, and Centocor (a unit of Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), walked away from its CNTO411 blog. J&J still does J&JBTW, and GSK maintains More Than Medicine.

Here's PharmExec's take:

Strict corporate control by pharma companies engaged in social media essentially destroys what makes the space so dynamic: the ability for users to express controversial information and personal opinions. Therefore, it's no wonder that company-controlled blogs struggle to develop active communities, especially as they are pitted against private blogs and message boards where users can freely express their views.

Eye on FDA was a little more detailed:

A visible indication of possible multiple authors is the fact that the postings each have different fonts and spacing, indicating that they were drafted in Word somewhere and cut and pasted into the blog without stylizing consistently first. AZ indicates it is their desire to engage with the blog, but the early postings leave little upon which to engage.

Readers beware: AZ Health Connections has a strict, and somewhat unwelcoming, comments policy.

... any comments, questions, data, ideas or know-how, shall be deemed to be non-confidential and shall become the property of AstraZeneca, without compensation to the provider of such submissions.

This blog is not the place for your questions or comments about our specific products and we will not publish comments about AstraZeneca products.

PharmaGossip already found a way around that: There's already a sidewiki for the blog.

• Related:
• AZ Promoted Seroquel as Superior to Haldol When Company Data Said It Wasn't
• AZ's Seroquel Legal Bill Is $1.1B and Getting Bigger