**Updated April 20, 2010**

A few times over the last week or so, I’ve been asked how many life science companies are utilizing social media. I decided to make a list, and I also have some hints and shortcuts for you so that you can get a head start. In this post, I am focusing on companies that have physical or software products for life scientists and biotech companies not classified as healthcare (e.g., Monsanto). Note that I also have some personal genomics companies listed–they’re a bit of a grey area, but personally I’m very interested in them, so I’m including them. I’ll also show you how to find scientists in social media and blogs, as the list would be too lengthy here. There is a very nice, complementary list of pharma and healthcare social media that can be found on Dose of Digital kept up expertly by Jonathan Richman. Both lists are dynamic, feel free to leave a comment below to add your company, and I know Jonathan is open to updates to his list.

Life Science Companies Using Social Media

You’ll notice that many of the companies listed below are small, as social media is a great way for them to get exposure inexpensively. The larger companies are starting to be more active, and I have talked with a few who are working out policies and procedures to implement. There are some great examples of companies providing interesting information and helping customers. Also, there are some companies who simply post special offers and don’t seem to ‘get it,’ but I’m sure in time, they will. If you want to get updates from all of the companies easily, check out the Shortcut section for the RSS feeds and email updates.

Life Science Companies in Social Media

Shortcuts

When we had our ‘Social Media for Scientists‘ event in May, we discovered that many of you feel as though you don’t have the time for social media. How can we help? Well, nothing really substitutes for diving in and experiencing it yourself, but there are some shortcuts we can help you with. If you need help with RSS, check out this post/video.

Shortcuts for Scientists in Social Media

NOTE: Spammers are everywhere, so use caution. If you begin to get ‘direct messages’ from the people we are suggesting to follow on twitter, simply unfollow and block them.

We hope that you find these resources useful, and feel free to comment or give suggestions below. There are other resources for scientists on social media, and we will try to cover them here–this is just a start. If you work for a life science company, now is a great time to get started, contact Comprendia for a free consultation to learn more.

Share this post easily by using this URL: http://sdbn.org/sms

Many of you know I’m a big fan of Seth Godin, a real thought leader in social media. I’m reading a book of his called ‘Tribes,’ which talks about the need for people to come together with a common interest and towards a common goal (and I highly suggest the book). I realized that’s what we’re doing with the SDBN–utilizing the new tools available to create more communication among biotechnology professionals in the region. Seth suggests that one of the things that helps a Tribe to grow is to facilitate connections between members. We’re trying to create a feeling of community using the different venues, but we need your help! Please join, subscribe, and participate using the links below!

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To be connected, I think it’s important to know what’s going on with San Diego Biotech. For this, we have created ‘San Diego Biotech’ specific feeds for you, including news, jobs, and blog posts (which include events as well). Here are examples of the news, jobs, and blog feeds you’ll receive. We’ve set up email updates, RSS feeds (more info on RSS) and twitter accounts in many flavors, take your pick!

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Participate!

Nothing connects people more than meeting face to face. Please attend our monthly events, they are very interactive and we always feature the hottest companies and topics. The next meeting is September 22nd, featuring Intellikine. Also, we encourage you to attend the other networking events in San Diego, check them out on our calendar or visit their websites which are listed on the right column. We also want to hear from you! Comment below, write a blog post, tell us who you are on twitter, etc. This is your group, tell us how it can connect you better and help you to meet your goals. We’ve toyed with the idea of putting forums or other ways for you to interact here on the site, suggestions welcome!

During our May 28th Social Media for Scientists (SMS) SDBN event, William Gunn talked about friendfeed as a useful tool for discussing science and learning. We polled the attendees before the event and found that they knew almost nothing about it, and had little interest in learning about it. We set up a friendfeed room for the group and frankly have not had much adoption.

So, what’s so great about friendfeed, why do we keep talking about it? Friendfeed aggregates all of your activity on social media, so that when you post anything on twitter, your blog, Flickr, etc. (58 social media applications are available), all of your connections there see it. Now, think of this used with a scientific ‘persona,’ if you will. You can share interesting articles, blog posts, presentations–some people even post data on Flickr–with your colleagues. Every post can be commented on, leading to interesting discussions. See this example of how friendfeed was used to stimulate and manage discussions regarding the conference, and the interest was so high that posts were thought to be spam!

Friendfeed takes it one step further, allowing you to form and join groups which focus on topics (see table below). You can benefit from group members’ posts, ask questions of the group, and take part in the discussions from any post. Scientists have been using the web to interact via forums and mailing list for a long time (we even discussed friendfeed vs. these older ways of communicating there). While someone pointed out that there is ‘nothing wrong with the old forums and mailing lists’ and that ‘you can post longer items using the old methods’ I see real value in the ‘2.0′ forms of communicating such as friendfeed. With these types of social media, as with media such as twitter, often people post interesting observations that lead to unexpected comments and new directions–there is a level of serendipitous discovery that occurs. Also, because the groups are full of like-minded people, there is not much noise, and even discussions that are tangential to your work can be interesting. As William Gunn pointed out in our SMS presentation, you can also search all posts and comments from your friends or groups, leading to one of the most targeted web searches available (bing, eat your heart out).

One thing that I find incredibly interesting is that these groups can also become commentaries on larger issues. See the References Wanted group below–it is a repository for articles that scientists cannot access freely, and thus a commentary on the need for more open access science, paradigms that journals such as PLoS subscribe to. In addition, you’ll find that the scientists on friendfeed are keen to learn about new tools–see the Evernote Addicts group, a group dedicated to software for aggregating information that scientists (and others) find very useful. As with other types of social media, it is not clear what the lifetime of friendfeed’s relevancy will be, but you can be sure that the people here will be ahead of the curve in knowing what the ‘next big thing’ for scientists will be, even if it means moving away from friendfeed or being a ‘force’ to help change it.

As with other social media, the best way to learn is to try it yourself. I suggest signing up and subscribing to the groups below, getting email updates for convenience at first. We realize that some of you are still hesitant to join, and that’s OK. It turns out that Facebook and friendfeed have a lot of similarities, as a fan page can be set up for a group of people, and items can be posted on and discussed among members. We set up a SDBN fan page for this purpose, become a fan and start posting and interacting! We hope that it will give you a ‘taste’ of ’serendipitous scientific social media’ and that you’ll be inspired to participate in tools such as friendfeed. We’ll also continue to help you learn more about the tools for science in social media through blog posts and events. As we mentioned at the SMS event, participating in social media gives you a way to get a ‘leg up’ from your colleagues in real time, and we think that once you start experiencing it, you’ll be as hooked as we are!

P.S. On friendfeed there is even a discussion on this post!

Friendfeed Groups for Life Scientists: Some Examples

Don’t see a group that interests you? Search the friendfeed groups for your research area or anything you’re interested in, or start your own!

Posted by Mary Canady of Comprendia, which helps life scientists and the industry improve communication through social media and marketing strategies. Special thanks to Sally Church of Icarus Consultants & PharmaStrategyBlog for helping with the list of groups, and to the friendfeed life scientists group, who let this ‘marketer in scientist clothing’ participate in the group. Also thanks to William Gunn, for help and convincing me to persist with friendfeed even though I didn’t ‘get it’ at first.