Pinterest has attracted some early activity from pharma companies with a fast-growing platform for sharing visual content. Sounds innocuous enough, yet media consultant Peter Houston writes about some of the potential risks of using the site.
In a guest blog for PharmaExec.com, Houston cites an Intouch Solutions analysis of Pinterest that notes the lack of moderating available to corporate users. While text comments are far less common on Pinterest than Facebook ($FB) and Twitter, he wrote, the lack of moderation exposes uses to the risk of unwanted comments from third parties.
To be clear, many social web platforms pose risks from third parties. Pinterest happens to be one of the newer social-media animals that people across the pharma industry and other sectors are trying to figure out. It's got huge potential for brands because, as Houston reports, data show that the site drives a lot of traffic to websites and blogs with special appeal to women in the their twenties and thirties. Boehringer Ingelheim, Bayer and others from the industry have already begun using Pinterest.
Yet there's a difference between a company establishing its own presence on Pinterest and enabling its content to be easily shared on the platform. As Houston writes, Intouch Solutions recommends the latter and against the former because of the lack of third-party moderation.
Houston aptly points out that just because the site presents a low risk of undesirable third-party comments, the risk still exists.
- check out Houston's blog