The New York Times with drug makers, a consumer watchdog group, the FDA, and Google about how a lack of specified rules for Internet marketing conflicts with the print and TV rules that the FDA currently applies to new media.

Fourteen pharmaceutical companies were warned by the FDA earlier this month for failing to include risk information in search ads. The consensus among communications professionals who spoke with PRWeek is that the FDA needs to develop a clear policy for digital communications. Search ads are used, in part, by pharmaceutical companies as part of a reputation management strategy.

The same sentiment was echoed in today’s story.

Mary Ann Belliveau, health industry director at Google, told the NYT that “… the sense in the industry was ‘that the F.D.A. sent letters about ‘you shouldn’t do this, you shouldn’t do that,’ as opposed to issuing clear digital guidelines that the companies should follow.’”

Now, companies will only use “generic-sounding Web addresses that redirect users to the brand’s site,” an allowance only made for pharmaceutical companies, and are questioning the FDA to evaluate the difference in online marketing techniques.

With technology changes on the horizon for the healthcare industry, Dell launched a social media site to generate ideas and solutions that would improve the improve the “delivery, efficiency, and quality of healthcare using IT,” the company said on April 6.

The site, called IdeaStorm for Healthcare and Life Sciences, is a branch of IdeaStorm, a brainstorming site which was launched in 2007.

Kerry Bridge, head of digital media communications for Dell, told PRWeek that the site is targeted at large healthcare organizations as well as influencers and key stakeholders in the healthcare blogging industry.

“It’s a huge social media community, specifically looking at healthcare IT,” she says. “And these are the people we want to be talking to, share ideas with. Dell would like to be a valuable member of that community.”

Dell plans to promote the site within healthcare social media communities, on its blog and company Web site, and through the newsletters that the sales force distributes.

“It’s definitely a stake in the ground,” she says. “…[to show] that we’re committed to the healthcare industry.

Blogs and Twitter are abuzz with , the coined after several books were removed from the ranking system on Amazon.com. The books, largely with homosexual themes, included Brokeback Mountain, Ellen DeGeneres: A Biography, and Heather Has Two Mommies. It seems ranks have now returned to some titles, but some blogs are keeping track of those that were affected.

Mark Probst, the author of gay romance book The Filly, first noticed that his book was de-ranked and contacted Amazon. After receiving a response saying it was due to a policy where “adult” materials were not included in rankings, he blogged about it. But when consumers pointed out that some heterosexual “adult” materials were still included in rankings, Amazon said the original de-ranking was due to a .

The news has quickly spread through social media like Twitter, and some groups are urging a of the retailer. Amazon does not have a press release up on its Web site and representatives from the online retailer and its PR agency OutCast Communications have not yet returned PRWeek’s calls for comment.

UPDATE: Patty Smith, director of corporate communications for Amazon, replied to PRWeek with a statemtn via email, saying “This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.”

A new report from the National Defense University offers some social media tips for government folks - ones “that actually makes sense,” writes Wired’s DangerRoom blog. The aptly named “Social Software and National Security,” report is expected out early next week, Wired says, but the blog provides a sneak peek at the four tenants the paper suggests:

• Inward sharing
• Outward sharing
• Inbound sharing
• Outward sharing

Hmm…

An excerpt under the “Outward sharing” headline reads:

The 2005 natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina is now a textbook example of the need for multi-agency, multi-government, multi-media engagement in an ad hoc and constantly evolving manner.  More recently, people using social software have been able to make useful contributions during real world events such as flooding in Bangladesh, the California wildfires, and Hurricane Gustav…

Who’s winning on Twitter in the political sphere? Left or right? One blogger on the right’s use of to build a conservative movement on the microblogging site.

Much of the chatter in the media has been that the left, via its awe-inspiring, marathon-length successful campaign for Barack Obama has spawned the first tech presidency. But Blog P.I.’s William Beutler of New Media Strategies argues the right is harnessing at least one channel better - Twitter.

These new conservative projects are often built around Twitter itself. Sometimes this results in really annoying tweets, but at this point the right is doing more interesting things in this space.

Thoughts from others? From TweetLeft?

The Phoenix Suns, which has been a leader in social media in the NBA, launched its own Twitter-based platform, which will collect Tweets from fans and Suns players and staff and display them on its Web site.

The new platform, Suns Twackle, was developed in partnership with Octagon Digital and, in addition to fans, will pull in Tweets from Shaquille O’Neal (@The_Real_Shaq), Steve Nash (@The_Real_Nash), the Suns Dancers (@SunsDancers), various staffers, and Alvin Gentry (@AlvinGentry), the NBA’s first head coach to join Twitter.

This week, I wrote a news article about executive search firms and how the economic downturn has affected their work. While almost everyone I talked to reported a decrease in projects and assignments, many of them were taking action, hoping to stay bring in and keep more clients. After the jump, a few ways executive search and recruitment firms are changing.
Read more »

All eyes are on the G20 in London this week, increasingly focused on the instead of the . The Financial Times, which has interviewed a number of world leaders attending the summit, has conducted wide-ranging media outreach this week to promote its coverage.

The newspaper has pitched editor Lionel Barber, US managing editor Chrystia Freeland, and Washington bureau chief Ed Luce to cable broadcast outlets as experts on the event, and also notified media trade publications about the series of interviews, said Darcy Day Keller, Financial Times head of communications for the Americas, via e-mail. The outlet has also reached out to bloggers via Facebook and , she said.

On Wednesday evening, I attended a panel on online marketing for books. The NYC Chapter of the Women’s National Book Association hosted Getting the Word Out: Marketing Your Book on the Web, held at the Jefferson Market Library in New York. The well attended event focused on topics including being authentic when using social media, how blogging and social media translates to book sales, and ().

Susannah Greenberg, principal of Susannah Greenberg PR, moderated the panel, which included several authors and book publishing insiders: Fauzia Burke, founder and president of Internet marketing firm FSB Associates; Peter Costanzo, director of online marketing for Perseus Books Group; Ron Hogan, founder of Beatrice.com and senior editor at MediaBistro’s Galleycat; Kelly Leonard, executive director of online marketing at Hachette Book Group USA; and Abby Stokes, author of Is This Thing On?: A Computer Handbook for Late Bloomers, Technophobes, and the Kicking and Screaming. Read more after the jump.
Read more »

Clinical trial recruitment firms and the PR firms that offer this service are starting to look at social media as a means to better reach potential patients that may not be aware of certain trials, or that they could qualify for them.

Last week, the Los Angeles Times on the number of clinical trials that are postponed because enrollment numbers have not been met. And a March 10 Newsweek story at the types of social media networks that pharmaceutical companies are tapping into to recruit patients.

While Facebook and Web sites have been two major for pharmaceutical or biotechnology companies to recruit patients, one firm is eying Twitter - specifically because it is already a public forum, unlike a private Facebook page, says Carmen Gonzalez, manager of strategy and communications for Healthcare Communications Group.

“It’s a way to cut through the noise,” she notes.

The clinical trial recruitment firm recently drafted a set of guidelines to provide to clients who are considering Twitter as a part of their strategy.