Physicians aren't quitting Twitter over Elon Musk!
It’s been a chaotic month for Elon Musk and his recent acquisition, Twitter. Musk's tenure at the company so far has been mired in controversy as the mercurial billionaire makes changes to the platform and cuts staff, and a number of high-profile users have already jumped ship.
However, amidst this controversy, social monitoring captured via Ferma.AI shows that MDs are not ready to quit Twitter just yet.
Ferma.AI’s study found that 75% of physicians (sample size = 566) who were active during scientific conferences (ASCO, ASH, AAN, ESMO, etc) continued to post on Twitter this week. The physicians in the sample were manually vetted and mapped to their NPIs.
While the future looks bleak
Twitter’s always had challenges with misinformation, Musk induced further chaos by enabling imposters to get verified for $8. At its peak, Eli Lilly issued an apology for a misleading message from an imposter account and stopped all its advertisement campaigns. Musk is planning to relaunch a rock solid version of the paid service and it remains to seen if that can be done.
Holding off relaunch of Blue Verified until there is high confidence of stopping impersonation.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 22, 2022
Will probably use different color check for organizations than individuals.
Physicians are planning to stay
Despite expressing frustration, many physicians, including key digital opinion leaders, have decided to stay on Twitter because the social media platform has become an essential tool to help patients, advance science, and fight misinformation.
The journal articles also lag in time. Twitter is where it's at.
— Diana Zicklin Berrent (@dianaberrent) April 3, 2022
The reasons I think it's essential for #ScienceTwitter and #MedTwitter to stay with @Twitter right now
— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) October 30, 2022
—Spread the truth/facts/good info
—Counter & stand up to mis/dis-information
—No suitable alternative for reach
—There's still block and mute
—Don't give up hope for improvement
My prediction that the percent of #MedTwitter that will leave twitter because of @elonmusk is:
— chadi nabhan MD, MBA, FACP (@chadinabhan) November 5, 2022
0%
Even the Commissioner of FDA, Dr. Robert Califf, encouraged people not to abandon Twitter.
The easy thing to do would be to abandon using Twitter, but that’s not the right thing for us to do at this time. More than ever before, it’s important that FDA continues to use Twitter for good and do everything in our power to protect the public from potential harm.
— Dr. Robert M. Califf (@DrCaliff_FDA) October 31, 2022
Pharma should increase their engagement
Amidst the chaos and controversy, Twitter remains a vital resource to MDs for healthcare-related information. And biopharma firms that manage to maintain positive relations with the #MedTwitter community, even during this chaos, would end up increasing their brand equity.
ZoomRx Social Listening, powered by Ferma.AI, helps biopharma companies monitor the dynamic and rapdily evolving conversations taking place on Twitter and many other social networks. To learn more about how to measure and maintain positive relationships with the #MedTwitter community, book a 30-minute meet here.