Monday, April 23, 2007

"Flaky" PharmaCentral Launched!

Far from "flaky" is Steve Woodruff's new PharmaCentral PageFlake index to the Pharma Blogosphere. Here's what he has to say:

The concept is built on what John Mack has done by creating the pharma blogosphere site, who gets credit for pulling a bunch of links together, and promoting the whole idea of pharma blogging as something of a "collective effort."

What I've done is to try to make it easier to visualize and access the blogs, with a further attempt to categorize them by emphasis.

Check it out at: http://www.pageflakes.com/pharmacentral/

Today is the first day it is publicly accessible. I would very much like to have your feedback on a couple of things in particular:

  • whether you feel your blog is properly classified in the tabbed categories (note: each blog will be assigned to only one category)
  • whether you think the categories need to be altered to any extent to improve the classification
  • whether you feel, over time, that other blogs should be included (note: I plan to include those that have a track record of at least 3 months of solid content, and that focus pretty specifically on pharma/biotech)
[Peter Rost - your blog does not have a publicly accessible "feed", so I did not include Question Authority. But your newsworthy posts get so much attention at the other blogs that you seem omnipresent anyway!]

I made this portal because, while it is very valuable to go to each individual site, it's time-consuming and inconvenient. Feed readers are great (I use Google's), but the interface isn't ideal. PageFlakes enables a more compelling visualization and ease of access. Readers can come to one site and jump off to articles of interest from there.

By having an umbrella site like this, I hope we can all gain additional exposure, and help a growing number of other folks to keep up on the latest commentary.

Let me know your thoughts!

I really like the "flakes." If my experience is any guide, I'd say this is a work in progress -- maybe the classification needs some work. It's really difficult to classify blogs in the Pharma Blogosphere and I'm sure Steve will get some criticism. After all, you can please some bloggers some of the time, and all bloggers some of the time, but you can you can't please all bloggers all the time!

4 comments:

Peter Rost said...

I'm included, after all, and I'm in the same group as PharmaGossip. I couldn't be more honored.

. said...

I would tell Flake to try harder with the Question Authority Blog. I have it on GOOGLE READER, so it MUST be accessible to the public on a RSS feed. I would try again or write Dr. Rost. He should be heard first hand :)

I think its wonderful that PHARMA BlogoSphere is shouting out new bloggers like Flakes and myself.

Way to go :)

Anonymous said...

No one will ever beat your original, John.

But I have to say Ye Olde Flakey Pharma (tm) has some nice Web 2.0 features -- if Pageflakes can keep the technical side of things working and maybe come up with a better address, they could make a splash.

Good luck!

Anonymous said...

Well done... even if I feel a bit lonely on the Compliance / Regulatory tab ;-))

Cuberdon from eCTD (htpp://ectd.wordpress.com)