The increased prevalence of healthcare-related social media and other web-based communications has generated interest in tools that measure the attention and engagement of published content. In the context of medical research publications, the use of alternative metrics, or altmetrics, in place of article citations, has also grown. To date, pharmaceutical companies show limited interest in social media tracking and altmetrics tools, and their reluctance is driven by concerns about the sharing of fraudulent research and the risk of genuine research findings being misinterpreted. Despite these limitations, five strong areas of opportunity arise for pharmaceutical companies to explore, namely patient groups supporting rare diseases, the recruitment of patients into clinical trials, communications at scientific conferences, the supplementing of traditional data sets, and support for regulatory compliance.