2013 in the Rearview

I attribute my habit of testing out social media to the family lore that I come from a long line of tinkerers. That said, I have invested the time to investigate whether tools meet my qualitative goals (Did I learn anything new? Was communication bidirectional?) but have relatively little knowledge about quantitative metrics (What is a “good” click rate? How many visitors should I have?). But at the end of 2013, I got a year end report from Word Press about my blog that made me curious about what people were actually reading.

Blogging

In 2013, I posted 28 times with the most popular piece coming in early January and the second in early December.

1. Active Life Science VCs & Twitter: Correlation? Causation? Randomness? January
2. Dark Paths on the Entrepreneurial Journey December
3. Human Capital in Biotech: Recycle, Reuse, Reduce January
4. Leveraging Technology to Build Community: Biotech Meetup March
5. Entrepreneurship: The Allure of (the Illusion of) Control September

This list suggests to me that you all are most interested in reading about my experience as an entrepreneur at Quintessence as well as my ramblings observations about biotech community development. Both topics seem inherently more personal than my more common posts providing facts and figures about biotechnology financings and Wisconsin biotech.

Twitter

Tweets Most Retweeted (via Twitonomy) These are the tweets that people shared with their followers.

1. MT @AndyBiotech MT @NatureBiotech For startups, view beyond #VentureCapital bit.ly/198MPz2#BioEntrepreneur http://t.co/HZyuG7h3QY (December 23)
2. ht.ly/r9Cl0 MT @bijans “23andMe must immediately discontinue mktg the PGS until such time as it receives FDA mktg authorization” (November 25)
3. E&Y report #bio2013 innovation capital holding steady ~$15B but still ~$5B less than pre-crisis (April 23)
4. MT @JohnTuckerPhD MT @Write4Research US medical grant winners suggests by 2020 >$ to >70yo than <40 http://t.co/eBbo9bYruM HT @lauranewmanny (November 17)
5. @BioKoozie sharing dessert with me at #BIO2013 So kind! (there is probably a mitosis joke in there somewhere) flic.kr/p/edF6Am (April 23)

I am gratified to see that what people shared was (mostly) about biotech and not my random tweets.

Tweets Most Favorited (via Twitonomy) People use Favorites for various reasons, including saving links to view later, but it is a general measure of being noticed.

1. Did 5 min pitch of cancer drug devlpmt co QuintBio to predominately tech crowd ht.ly/o7KPI Great exprnce, room 2 improve! (21 August)
2. MT @techstars HELLO, WISCONSIN #Wisconsin Startup Night @techstars in #Madison March 4th cc: @AccelMad @CEntrepreneurs tsta.rs/ZmWYIa (19 February)
3. Excited to talk abt Quintessence (drug dev/entrep) at @CEntrepreneurs & @AccelMad Madison Startup Showcase Mon 8/19 ht.ly/nTu9A (14 August)
4. MT @rsm2800 Must read=>Why big data won’t cure us (Gina Neff) ht.ly/pLdj0 HT @williamhersh A few quotes follow #hcsm (12 October)
5. cc @gener8tor @gl33p @FluSpinner @younkle @BioForward @CEntrepreneurs @_InWisconsin MT @XconomyWI @Xconomy is coming to Wisconsin (13 December)

Hmm, two tweets about Wisconsin and two about Quintessence. I’m often sharing local news but I don’t often share about the company.

Tweets with the Most Clicked Links (via Hootsuite)

1. MT @bijans “23andMe must immediately discontinue mktg the PGS until such time as it receives FDA mktg authorization” http://ht.ly/r9Cl0 (25 November)
2. Contribute info here http://ht.ly/qWplP MT @ldtimmerman Many flaws in startup data. I’m asking readers for help in sharpening (18 November)
3. @daviesbj No problem. There’s a wiki for that http://ht.ly/rd5qK (26 November)
4. Enjoyed WSJ: The Future of Medicine is Now http://ht.ly/grRFy Exs of sci/tech starting to impact pts. Timescale of devlpmts not clear but (31 December 2012)
5. New post: Dark Paths on Entrepreneurial Journey http://ht.ly/rqdAp + offline rvws. Didn’t publish bc uncomfortable w – undercurrent (3 December)
6. Randomly found this post-acquisition interview w @Michael_Gilman http://ht.ly/k2ikt Great read for beyond-deal-term ?s (14 April)
7. Graph of top 10 cos w ADCs in clinic via Dec 2012 GEngNews piece http://ht.ly/iWKsi (also features biotech stock-er @JasonCRG ) (14 March)
8. My latest post is Human Capital in Biotech: Recycle, Reuse, Reduce http://ht.ly/gw0nr Inspired by @LifeSciVC & @ksbosley (3 January)
9. Twitter active VC list updated today http://ht.ly/haGYr Thanks @nmckeehan & @steen1969 for additional names & info! (27 January)
10. 10. FDA & genomics: Last wk approved 1st next gen sequencer http://ht.ly/ranNe This wk warns 23andme http://ht.ly/ranRt Vdiff situations (25 November)

These links are an interesting mix of sharing what others already shared (1, 2), stories I found or my opinion (3, 4, 6, 7, 10) and my own blog posts (5, 8, 9). The surprise for me here is people click through to what I write from Twitter. I’m not sure who I thought was reading my blog – my family, my cat.

LinkedIn

I don’t have any data on LinkedIn engagement other than the what is shown in my basic profile. Anecdotally, I get the most in-person comments about things I share on LinkedIn, which may reflect that my sharing there is almost always in the BioFoward (Wisconsin biotech) group.

Google+

I did a quick look for G+ analytics but didn’t see a straightforward way to look at interaction (shares, clicks).

Looking Ahead

Perhaps I’m using this qualitative data as confirmation bias, but I had been thinking about making 2014 an experiment in sharing more of my experiences with Quintessence as we embark on a mission to partner our cancer drug for the next stage of clinical trials.