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.

PepsiCo and Porter Novelli joined forces earlier this month to host a Twitter party discussing the latest trends. The April 1 event brought together 100 of Pepsi’s top communicators, as well as social media experts Peter Shankman, Stephanie Agresta, and Maury Postal. It was run by PN’s Marian Salzman.

The discussion reportedly generated over 1,400 tweets with topics including the use of social media in marketing.

“The goal of the event [was] twofold,” writes Bonin Bough, global director of social media at PepsiCo. “First is to send the message that PepsiCo is here to support, enable and participate within the social media space, and the second goal was to hear what the world had to say about global trends.”

Still trying to figure out what the hub-bub is about the Twitter? Check out this from PRWeek and a story from

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?

Paul Levy, president of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, tried to improve the prognosis of The Boston Globe on April 6 by organizing a blog rally in support of the newspaper. The Globe’s owner, The New York Times Co., has threatened to shut down the outlet if its unions don’t agree to concessions.

About 30 Boston-area bloggers participated in the rally, said Levy, who blogs at runningahospital.blogspot.com.

“Those of us who are involved in civic affairs in this town understand that unless you have a vibrant investigative entity in the community, the government and the corporations will not be held accountable,” he tells PRWeek.

Kayak.com’s review for an AOR is nearing completion, with two agencies set to present on Tuesday, April 7, according to Kellie Pelletier, Kayak.com’s VP of communications. Stay tuned for more exclusive coverage the week of April 6.

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.

Visitors to the International Herald Tribune’s Web site, whether checking for the latest on the markets or updates from the in London, are surely wondering if they clicked on the wrong bookmark.

Parent organization The New York Times Co. rebranded the publication’s Web site “The Global Edition of The New York Times” on March 29, combining the content created by its staff on the page with that of Times journalists. It also has a new URL: global.nytimes.com.

The Times Co. is also promoting the reorganized page, which visitors to IHT.com are automatically transferred to, at the top of .

The PR for new online community Daughters.com focused on what the site offers: advice and an interactive community designed to help families raise girls ages 8 to 15.

New Moon Girls Media, the company behind New Moon Girls magazine and Web site, worked with Cahill Media Group on the March 10 launch, reaching out to mommy and grandparent bloggers, telling them of the “parent to parent” discussion board, searchable collection of articles about raising girls, and ways they can submit questions to experts. Additionally, the PR campaign targeted traditional media nationwide.

Founder and CEO Nancy Gruver contributes to one of several blogs on the site and said in a statement, “After nearly 17 years of creating groundbreaking communities for tween and teen girls, we’re thrilled to provide parents and caregivers with the first place they can visit 24/7 to find answers to all of their questions about raising daughters.”

Asked about blogger-payment programs conducted by what many believe to be a growing number of communications professionals, Don Bates, professor at George Washington University, told PRWeek via e-mail that such efforts aren’t controversial, or new. Said Bates: “A minority of PR firms has been using paid advertising and paid media for as long as I can remember, and I’ve been around the business for more than 35 years.”

“Paid media is a reasonable extension of PR services, and to my way of thinking, something that should be considered, especially in this era of digital communications when so much is moving to the Wild West of online,” he said.

However, Bates added, the practice “is not for the uninitiated.”

“It may look easy but it isn’t. The required research, art, copy, placement, billing, administration – all are different than their counterparts in PR,” he added. “Then there’s the potential impact on your media relations work. Once you start advertising, the media will start to treat you like an ad agency with potentially negative consequences for your client’s or employer’s press coverage.”

Two things that many in the financial communications probably didn’t expect to see together in the same sentence anytime soon: IR and Twitter.

On Friday, eBay announced on its blog, eBay Ink, that after three quarters of reporting its quarterly earnings via blog and covering the earnings calls on Twitter, the company has created some best practices for the earnings blogging going forward.

Those practices include a separate legal page to the Ink blog, rotating financial info every 90 days on the blog and Twitter, and special language that will designate some Tweets as a live-blogging session for the earnings announcement.

Ebay blogger Richard Brewer-Hay wrote that he was worried when he had to approach his legal team for the first time to talk about best practices and couldn’t find other companies who were using these social media tactics for their earnings announcements. But his fears were unfounded.

“I was worried I would be forced to cease this innovative way of reporting company information to our constituents,” Brewer-Hay wrote. “Thankfully that was not the case. Rather, it was mutually agreed that we could take this opportunity to set up a best practices approach to live-blogging and reporting company information via the Web - beyond traditional conference call and press release.”