So I’m putting some research together for a project and something hit me. Something I probably saw, read, or even thought before but I felt the need to write it down this time just so I could say that I did.

Here it is: Social and Mobile could never have become so big without each other. They aren’t so much conjoined twins as they are two separate organisms who support each other to the point of barely being able to survive without the other. 

Facebook was cool until everyone had a smart phone and could document and comment wherever they were, at which point it was like flipping the switch and suddenly everyone was on Facebook. Remember when the big feature of Twitter was that you could post to it from a text (hence the 140 character limit) from any phone? And did you see that Facebook has spent the last few months making a FB client that could work on almost any non-smart phone? You don’t spend those kind of resources unless you realize that mobile is vital to social, but that you’ve already cornered the smart-phone market.

And why else would mobile have grown so fast without social? To play more Angry Birds? We’d all have just bought GameBoys and PlayStation PSPs if it was about games. How does Apple impress you and get you to upgrade your iPhone? Twitter integration.

So from that we can ask two questions. One: why does pharma insist on separating the two? Two: Why would Google launch clients for G+ for Android and iPhones, but neglect to include iPads?

The reason pharma separates the two is obvious: Mobile is easier than social. There are so many rules (spoken and unspoken, written and unwritten) as to all the things pharma is not allowed to do in social, so it’s pretty much turned its back on it to focus on mobile. I get it, but that’s kinda like only exercising your right arm: neglecting your left arm isn’t just neglecting your left bicep and tricep, it’s really neglecting all the muscles between those arms: your chest and back which are the foundation to strong arms. It’s a short-sighted strategy and will soon result in diminishing mobile returns. 

For example, the FDA could start treating mobile a lot like it does social. Oh wait, it is! You’ve by now seen that the FDA will start looking at treating mobile apps like medical devices (which is actually not all that different from how it looks at social).  You can read Dave Ormesher’s post on it from this morning here.

Two: Why launch a Google+ iPhone app and not an iPad app? I wish I had an answer. I just know that I wasted five full minutes trying to find it in the app store to no avail (I even have a suspicion that they are blocking iPads from downloading the iPhone version).

Anyway, comment and twitter me. Tell me I’m wrong! @digital_pharma