I watch with some interest. I think many large companies (whether pharmaceutical or not) do social media badly. The main flaw is that as a company you need to chuck a reasonable amount of resource at it (i.e. someone full time who can write well and genuinely engage with the Internet populace) without really getting much in the way of measurable results or return on investment.
You then have the problem of the legal department getting paranoid about anything that’s published on any website – so you have to have comments moderated and posts approved before they go up. The main benefit of social media is that people can chip in with their thoughts and comments quickly and easily, without things having to be approved by the suits in legal.
So, in summary, nice try Sanofi-Aventis but I’ll bet you a beer it’ll peter out within a couple of months.