A 10,000 Character Limit Won't Solve Pharma's Twitter "Problem"

Doug Weinbrenner, senior director of social media at marketing firm Intouch Solutions, suggests that Twitter's plan to extend its 140-character limit to 10,000 will put the platform "back into [pharma marketers'] consideration set" because marketers are stymied by FDA regulations requiring important safety information (i.e., side effects) to fit in a 140-character Rx-branded tweet (see here).

He thinks this will be "revolutionary" for pharma marketers: "Twitter revolutionizing the platform is probably one of the biggest things that happened in social media over the last year, and there's a considerable amount of interest in us being at the forefront of social pharma," he said.

But there's one possible fly in the ointment that will continue to stymie pharma marketers.

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House Bill Would Give FDA 18 Months to Finalize "One-Click Rule" Guidance: ROFLMAOYSST

On May 20, 2015, Rep. Billy Long (R-Mo.) introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives a bill (H.R. 2479) that would "direct the FDA to clearly regulate meaningful, truthful and non-misleading communication of product information on social media."

Specifically, the draft of the bill (find it here) states that the FDA should revise its regulations and guidances to "recognize that [sponsors of medical products] may use the Internet to:

• "disseminate, in character-limited applications, truthful, introductory information about medical products, including the name of such products and their approved uses; and 


• "provide additional information about the safety and effectiveness of the medical products using information that is hyperlinked to such introductory information; and for regulatory purposes, treat hyperlinked information ... as if the information appeared in introductory information [i.e., the original character-limited text, meaning tweet]."

This, of course, is the "one-click rule," which has been hotly debated for years in pharma marketing circles. In fact, I was among the first observers to point out that the "one-click rule" as described above should be allowed. Let me explain...

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