It's a challenge to communicate a message within the confines of microblogs and sponsored links. What do you do within such space constraints when federal regulations require advertisements about drugs and medical devices to disclose their risks?
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration grapples with this problem in recent guidance to manufacturers of prescription drugs and medical devices.
The FDA's concern is that Twitter messages, limited to 140 characters, and the limited character spaces for sponsored links on Google and Yahoo, might not allow ads about prescription drugs to “present a fair balance between information related to risk and information relating to benefit.”
Information about the risks of pharmaceutical and medical devices products must be included in the exact same communication, regulators said.