One reason social media continues to experience growing popularity is its ability to quickly disseminate information, especially that which is often overlooked by traditional media. This is especially relevant for a nano-cap company such as Palatin Technologies (PTN), that may receive little or no coverage in traditional media outlets. Social media not only rounds out the story, but sometimes provides the only story.

PTN is currently stalled in its objective of proceeding with phase III clinical development for its feature sexual dysfunction drug Bremelanotide. As is typically the case, traditional media have covered the major “newsworthy” events surrounding PTN:

• Bremelanotide’s stalled development
• an earnings event
• data for a study indicating a new application for Bremelanotide

All valuable stories certainly, but social media takes this coverage a step further, delivering context about these stories with ongoing discussion that enable a reader to gain a more comprehensive analysis. Here at Collective Intellect, our ability to track these conversations in both social and traditional media helps me gain a greater picture of the “real” story about Bremelanotide.

The chart to the left shows just how much PTN coverage is dominated by social media (this graph shows results over the past two weeks).
Only 6% of media coverage comes from traditional news sources.

Example data

This message board post references a relevant deal with AstraZeneca that has long been forgotten by traditional media — but, it actually warrants further consideration because PTN’s stock has been battered by the news of Bremelanotide’s delay. Another board poster points out a number of reasons Bremelanotide would logically proceed to phase III studies, furthering the discussion of anticipated off-label use once approved. Although off-label drug use tends to enter a realm of moral dubiousness, it is common practice, and very relevant to the discussion, but more than likely avoided by the journalistic standards of traditional media. These comments, of course, are left to be translated by any prospective trader, but their simple existence provides a platform on which to proceed.

Ultimately, if a trader or analyst were to rely only on traditional media coverage for context to PTN’s financial picture, that picture would find a depreciated stock with little information available to forecast future developments. In addition, if PTN were to only look at traditional media for earned coverage, they’d be missing part of the story that makes up the full view into outside opinion, insight and corporate sentiment. Social media provides other insight for further analysis and inferences.