An odd title I grant you. But stay with me on this one.

For all the articles and posts and conversations I see and hear about Twitter I don’t see a lot of people describing how it feels to take part in what many people see as a colossal waste of one’s data plan.

What’s the big deal?

Because the very act of participating in a social media activity like this speaks to what social scientists call self-enhancement—the way people want to oversell themselves. (An idea covered in a great short by Evan Ratliff in the July issue of Wired.) But rather than retread his thoughts I’m going to describe what, in my opinion, the allure of Twitter is with a real-life experience.

My first real glimpse of the potential of this application came a few months ago. I was at SXSW attending a keynote speech. Ironically enough the speaker is Twitter CEO Evan Williams with Umair Haque of the Havas Media Lab as a guest moderator.

The room is packed front to back Standing room only. Filled to capacity to say nothing of the hundreds of others watching the live video feeds elsewhere in the convention center.

The presentation starts. Two very intelligent people begin speaking. Without going into unnecessary detail I can tell you it was bad right from the get-go. Boring. Laborious. Painful. And it just got worse as it wore on.

If you were on Twitter (and it looked like everyone was—this is Spring Break for geeks mind you) you could read audience commentary in real time. Not just from the people in the room but anyone with access to the video feed. And the more the speech dragged on, the sharper the commentary became.

And it occurs to me that here were two conversations happening: one between the two individuals on the stage and a silent one between the hundreds of people listening.

Now in a normal situation most people would be afraid to stand up and be the first one to leave in front of such a massive crowd to say nothing of the speakers. You may think it, but you don’t want to be “that rude person” who leaves his or her seat. Most of us are simply not wired for a stark response like that.

Not so with Twitter in the mix.

The Tweets quickly became far more entertaining than the presentation. They became the show. Sharp. Witty. You wanted to see just how barbed they would get. Really, really good ones would elicit silent but visible waves of smiles.

After about 15 minutes of everyone mercilessly raking the speakers over the coals it starts. People en mass start getting up and leaving. Front row people. Middle row people. Back row people. An exodus. A fast one too. I kid you not within a span of about 12 minutes probably a good third of the people in the room got up and left. More would follow.

It’s difficult to explain the feeling, but it was something along the line of a Borg-inspired “hive mind” sensation. Knowing that everyone around you was thinking and experiencing practically the same thing as you. It definitely altered how confident I felt about leaving the room (which I did—listening to this was like chewing on tin foil).

A remarkably bad presentation? Sure.

But I’m convinced the intense and rapid feeling of community the Twitter feed created gave this crowd a unified strength to do something few would do on their own.

And there, I think, lies the power of this medium. The ability to almost instantly create a vast community of people with a common interest or focus, and share it in real time.

And how might that be applied to health care and our personal well-being? Well, if we think about how a community of people can be a powerful influence to the individuals in it, perhaps it becomes a platform for encouragement. A tool for getting positive reinforcement and support to those who need it right then and there.

Imagine a diabetes patient getting real time encouragement from #dietstatefair when he’s walking past the elephant ears trailer. Or a recovering alcoholic getting support from #aakyderby if he’s down at the paddock watching hundreds of people sip mint juleps.

If you see it in those terms then all kinds of possibilities begin to open up for marketers and agencies alike.

But we need to make sure our messages are relevant, interesting and what our audiences are expecting from us.

Otherwise we might find ourselves in a big, empty room talking to ourselves.

Parents around the country have shared their disappointment and dissatisfaction with Johnson & Johnson on the handling of their latest recall.     In the past, Johnson & Johnson has been the poster child for how a company should handle crisis communications, but they seem to have dropped the ball on this one.  Parents are threatening to go generic or ban J&J products from their house all together.   Several parents went directly to the source and posted their concerns on JnJBTW, a blog managed by Marc Monseau, one of J&J’s senior media relations executives. One parent created a Facebook group of concerned parents regarding the McNeil Consumer Healthcare recall, and has drafted a letter that can be downloaded and appended so that parents can contact their US House of Representatives and State Senators.

The problem isn’t as much how they handled the recall announcement; it’s how and when they disseminated the information.  J&J did the expected blocking and tackling.  They issued a press release to the media and posted it on their website – at 9:15 PM – on a Friday.  I think it’s safe to say most people tune out the world as they go into a weekend, especially parents.  The weekend is their time to relax and be with their kids.

In this day and age, companies have to approach this type of thing differently.  They have to get the word out quickly and more directly to the right people.  There is Johnson & Johnson Facebook page.  Why didn’t they send a notice to all of the followers or make a post? I think it’s safe to assume they have a robust database.  Why didn’t they send out an e-mail blast? 

In the scheme of things, this will be just a blip on their image.  Johnson & Johnson is the most reputable company in the US  according to a study conducted by the Reputation Institute and has enough brand equity to fill the Grand Canyon.   according to a study conducted by the Reputation Institute and has enough brand equity to fill the Grand Canyon.   J&J and other companies watching this should consider this a learning experience and realize that the people do have a voice, and it’s louder than ever.

So, I’ll out myself.  Even though I work in an industry that is gung ho over social media, I have not fully embraced social media.   Don’t get me wrong, I love it and use it  ALOT, but just more as a tool.  To get a quick read on something, research a topic or a product, I’ve even been sucked into a few people’s blogs that I visit regularly,  and of course now I am actually posting content. 

I’m not one for tweeting what I had for breakfast and althoughI have a facebook page, I update it about as often as I go to church (sorry mom) and  I save my political, ethical and what’s wrong with the world rantings for those who have the good fortune of hearing them in person.  

But that’s just me, it’s clear the world uses social media for different reasons.  Don’t we? 

With all the press, online discussions, and articles about the phenomenon of  social media I’m surprised no one talks about what  motivates consumers to use social media…the WHY people use social media.  There’s tons of WHAT  people are doing, like Forrester’s social media ladder  or WHERE consumers are.  There is a wealth of information on the demographics of consumers who are engaging in social media or who uses MySpace verses Facebook .  But nothing on what inspires people to post or read or blog or tweet and keep them coming back for more. 

If marketers and brands really want to utilize social media to reach consumers and drive interaction with their brands shouldn’t we first understand what consumers really want and need from the brand and social media.  What do they get out of social media? 

As Harvard Business School professor Mikolaj Jan Piskorski explains “To be successful, you need to shift your mindset from social media to social strategy.”  Understanding the different motivations, what emotionally drives your audience(s), for using social media is the  first step to building a great social media strategy.    Plus, assuming everyone is motivated by the same thing can be a big mistake.

It seems like lately we are all becoming affected by a short attention span epidemic. Everywhere you look, information is being conveniently packaged in compact, swiftly digested chunks, often delivered in under 140 characters and designed to be viewed on a 3.5” screen.

In some ways, this has led to a remarkable expansion of the collective intelligence, but some of us have seen the potential for negative repercussions.

It seems like this trend is pervasive, encompassing topics of all sorts and all forms of media. But should we be getting our healthcare education in this manner?

Don’t you think it would be great if doctors could learn how to practice medicine by reading article callouts, Twitter feeds and watching YouTube videos? Didn’t think so.

But we often take that approach to our own healthcare.

These emerging information channels are a great resource for sharing information and opinion, but when it comes to our health let’s make sure that the medium is appropriate for the importance of the messages.

If you happen to be visiting Austin for this year’s annual South by Southwest conference, keep your eyes open for one of our team.  We’ll be wearing badges labeled “Worldwide Partners/MicroMass Communications, Inc.,” and attending the Interactive show dates from March 12^th through the 16^th.

We look forward to meeting some of you there. And if you’re an iPhone owner who went last year, you can rest assured knowing that AT&T has figured things out this time.

Hi.

On behalf of everyone at MicroMass, I’d like to welcome you to our new blog. Pretty soon, we’re going to be re-doing our website from the ground-up. But instead of waiting for that, we’ve decided to go ahead get the blog portion of it up and running.

Because we have a lot on our minds.

The posts you’re going to see here will orbit around the idea of Inspiring Change. It’s our primary driver as an organization and it shows up in a lot of our internal communications. It’s what we set out to do.

And talk about a coincidence.

If ever there were two industries experiencing change at warp-speed, it’s marketing and healthcare. Social media. Conversations. FDA. The consumer-in-control. Web 2.0. Web 3.0. Mobile apps. ROI. Transparency. We’re certainly not at a loss for buzzwords.

The economy withstanding, this is a really exciting time to be in either one of these spaces. They change and evolve almost daily. For me, the idea of working in both is being right on the zenith of our entire culture. Not that I forget there’s a world outside the “net web,” but more of our lives migrate to it every day. The part that relates to our health, especially so.

And that begs the question on all of our minds.

Can Big Pharma and the FDA find common ground and learn to play nice?

I’ll pose an opinion.

Yes.

But they will do it kicking and screaming at first.

Pharmaceutical companies will have to accept the reality (and it is a reality) that the control they cling to so much, simply isn’t there any more. The FDA will have to accept the fact that with this new landscape there is no possible way an organization can control everything said about it or—more to the point—it’s products. It’s going to have to cut these companies some slack on the legal front.

Both of these changes will be tectonic in scale and you can bet that it won’t be an overnight shift. Neither one of these complex entities are particularly known for their flexible behavior unless they have to.

Well, they have to.

At this point they’re both in massive catch-up mode in a communications space that is evolving faster than anything we’ve seen as a civilized species.

And to compensate for that I’m going to predict that this catch up will happen in huge, very visible chunks. A website that defies the conventional wisdom of phama companies and takes a huge risk to its’ brand. A ruling by the FDA declaring comments on a tool like Sidewiki is not the responsibility of a drug manufacturer. Bold moves by both sides.

Time will tell but I simply don’t see how it can turn out any other way. Plus, from a purely capitalistic perspective there’s waaay too much money on the table for things to move at a slow pace. And if anything can inspire change, it’s the Benjamins (Y2K anyone?).

(Cue Don LaFontaine)

Imagine a web where creators of products that affect our lives in the most literal sense possible had the freedom to speak openly and honestly about their cures without the specter of reckless litigation. The openness and learning that could come from a real dialogue between people and the pharma industry would lead to huge breakthroughs on both sides of the equation. And we would probably be a lot healthier because of it.

And that’s a change that should inspire all of us.