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I’m one of the lucky 300 who’ll be attending in person at the FDA’s public hearing on social media. The meeting represents an unprecedented step by the FDA to provide the digital pharma community with an opportunity to offer insights about how medical information and marketing is delivered through online channels.

The agenda and speaker list was released this morning. Many of the likely suspects will be in attendance, and the speaking roster includes representatives from big (and small) pharma (surprised not to see more!), healthcare marketing agencies, consultants, and technology companies. It will be interesting to see how the meeting unfolds.

My wishlist:

• I hope the agency folks keep the pitches and business development to a minimum (and I’m an agency guy). This meeting provides an opportunity to communicate about issues that may have long-term implications on our businesses. Let’s hope it doesn’t turn into an agency pitch/bitch.
• Focus on the future, and don’t try to fix the past (or present). Yes — we need to look at the current state of social media, but most of us believe we’re at the onset of the revolution; let’s talk about what’s coming down the pike and prepare–not focus on current roadblocks.
• Meaningful discussion about search marketing, with feasible outcomes. The FDA’s unexpected crack-down on pharmaceutical search ads last Spring sent a collective shutter down the spines of pharmaceutical companies and agencies alike. Healthcare is one the top online spenders and search marketing has become a critical component in any campaign. When will the FDA offer meaningful and substantial guidelines?
• Let’s talk personalized medicine. How will this emerging area be addressed by the FDA?

More to come…

Note: all the information on the event has been gathered in one place by @Skypen over here.

Kudos to my friends and colleagues at Cambridge BioMarketing Group on the launch of their awesome new web presence.

Cambridge BioMarketing is an integrated communications agency serving clients in the healthcare, pharmaceutical, biotech, and life sciences industries.

Check out the Legends of Pharmaceutical Advertising campaign–help bid a fond farewell to hall-of-famers like “The Empty Suit” and the “The Final Tchotchke”…

Before they became great American writers, Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis shared one thing in common: they all worked as beat reporters for the Kansas City Star.

While he only worked at the newspaper for six months, Hemingway credited The Kansas City Star stylebook as “the best rules I ever learned for the business of writing.” The full stylebook doesn’t appear to be available in public domain. However, there are several high-level guidelines and excerpts that any modern writer will find valuable and striking in their simplicity:

The three tenets:

• Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative.
• Never use old slang.
• Eliminate every superfluous word.

More dogma:

• Be careful of the word also. It usually modifies the word it follows closest. “He, also, went” means “He, too, went.” “He went also” means he went in addition to taking some other action.
• Be careful of the word “only.” “He only had $10″ means he alone was the possessor of such wealth; “He had only $10,” means the ten was all the cash he possessed.
• In writing of animals, use the neuter gender except when you are writing of a pet that has a name.
• Try to preserve the atmosphere of the speech in your quotation. For instance, in quoting a child, do not let him say “Inadvertently, I picked up the stone and threw it.”

You can get more info on proper writing styles and mechanic from the Elements of Style, by Strunk and White, and the Associated Press Stylebook, which was influenced by classics stylebooks from the Kansas City Star, The Boston Globe, and others.

Twitter….seemingly so much promise, but for those of us who aren’t social media experts…what’s the real deal?

Pear Analytics released a new study on Twitter usage trends. They tracked 2,000 tweets over a 2-week period and then categorized them into six usage buckets: news tweets, spam, self-promotion (my favorite), pointless babble, conversational tweets, and pass-along value. Tweets containing “RT” were categorized as “pass along”, and those using “@” were considered conversational.

The study revealed that over two thirds of tracked tweets were either “pointless babble” or “conversational”. I suppose this isn’t too surprising. However, the study found that news-related tweets constituted the smallest category; less than 4% of tweets are news-related.

The study is provided in whitepaper format on Pear’s website and is worth a read. There are also some interesting findings on user demographics and the overall reach of Twitter.

I’ve been a Twitter user for a couple of years now. My usage is casual at best. Maybe I’ll check once or twice a day and perhaps post a handful of tweets a week. I’ve never really used it for promotion, nor have I made any effort to recruit followers. I find it useful for tracking news and updates on industries I’m interested in—hash tags are the most useful feature to me. But getting to the good stuff requires a lot of sifting. Several months ago I removed all the so-called “social media experts” from my follow list and the results were remarkable. It’s amazing how such a small group of power-users can create so much useless static.

Check out the visualization below (from Gizmodo). Despite the hype and promise, it’s easy to make the case that Twitter has become a soapbox for a select group of loud mouths. This statistic is likely one that keeps the Twitter founders up at night—it points to unsustainable business model.

The Pear Analytics study is one of several that have clearly illustrated that Twitter provides value in terms of reach, trend-tracking, and marketing. However, the majority of content is either pointless or conversational and likely not of interest to the largest Twitter population: relatively passive users like me. The study highlighted a new service called Philtro that uses preferences and complex algorithms to serve up only the Tweets that you real care about—supposedly leaving the junk behind.

I recently noticed that my monthly pending on iTunes has spiked to over $30.00—more than double than my previous monthly average. Not surprisingly, the increase correlates precisely with the time I’ve owned an iPhone.

If that wasn’t enough, I also noticed that there was a 3X increase in the number of purchases in July and August. I’m usually careful about my spending and I didn’t notice any real additional spending; the iPhone’s purchasing experience is dastardly clean and effortless.

Is this common among new iPhone owners? Apple has been vague about the amount of profit made from iTunes—mostly due to scrutiny from the entertainment industry. If you look at their Q308 financials, they indicate a 35% over the year in “Other Music Related Products and Services.” I’ll be interested to see if the numbers increase in Q408 with more iPhone 3G users.

I may be an anomoly, but it’s clear that the iPhone makes it much easier (and transparent) to purchase from iTunes, and I’m curious to see if this becomes a real boon to iTunes.

Writing is something that can always be improved. While some people have a innate talent for writing, anyone’s writing can be improved by following the basic rules of style, taking time to proofread, and avoiding grammatical errors and pitfalls.

It’s also easy to fall into bad habits with writing and sometimes just recognizing them is enough to break out.

Here are five of my favorites posts on writing and how to improve your prose.

1. How to Write with Style – Kurt Vonnegut
Vonnegut’s essay on writing from 1999 offers eight points on how to write with more style. This is a wonderful piece that gives some great insight into the author’s mine and approach to writing.

Favorite Tip:
The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not.

2. Strunk & White’s The Element of Style
Even though you can get the most widely accepted guide to writing style online, I recommend buying this little book and keeping it on your desk at all times. A number of websites also offer quick summaries of the Strunk’s main rules.

Favorite Tip:
Do not take shortcuts at the cost of clarity.

3. How to Write a Thank You Note
Anyone who performs business of any kind should know how to write a proper thank you note. This post provides a six-point formula for crafting a classy note. When is the last time you sent someone a handwritten thank you note?

Favorite Tip:
I’m not going to go all Miss Manners on your ass and get into the social intricacies and delicate situations that surround thank-you note writing, as I was taught that a solid thank-you note will transcend all complicated situations—and I have seen no evidence to the contrary.

4. Ten Overused Words in Writing
Simplifying and cutting wasteful prose is a tip seen in almost every writing guide. This post helps by pointing out ten words commonly overused or misused by writers. You’ll be surprised at how many of these you use.

Favorite Tip:
Mark Twain made this comment about using “very”: “Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.” “Very” is a crutch for finding the right word to describe what you mean to say.

5. The Most Embarrassing Grammatical Mistakes
Grammatical mistakes are always glaring and ugly–no matter how good the writer’s prose. There are a number of common mistakes made by amateur writers. This post calls them out.

Favorite Tip:
If you keep your sentence structure simple, you are less likely to misplace a modifier. When in doubt, start with the subject, then move right away to your verb. This can lead to dry writing, but that’s better than inadvertently hilarious writing, like this: Having finished homework, the TV was turned on.