Stanford University, the Valley’s startup creating and employee providing uberhub have unveiled BeWell@Stanford, an online community that aims to promote healthy living among the school’s 30,000 students, faculty, and staff.
BeWell@Stanford is powered by Wellsphere and offers a central place where members can get personalized advice, discover wellness resources and activities available on and near campus, meet like-minded people, and form groups for support, advice and encouragement.
Eric Stein, senior associate athletic director at Stanford University said that the site was about creating “a healthier Stanford.”
Once signing up, users can immediately begin joining groups based on activities, interests, or shared goals. Members can post notes on their progress, get advice, and support from experts and peers, watch and share streaming videos, send compliments to each other, and invite friends and family to participate. Just in case late nights plotting a new world changing startup gets in the way, each member receives personalized updates telling them to go outside and exercise more than their fingers at a keyboard.
Users will also has access Wellsphere’s directory of local healthy living resources in nearby Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Redwood City and surrounding areas, and the option to interact with people in the greater Wellsphere community.
This is the ultimate in irony.
Brilliant geeks needing a computer and virtual social network to emulate behavior that has existed for centuries around the world in less industrialized cities
I see that as Stanford marketing move.
uncov will not be pleased.
Sanford?
I thought he was dead! hmmmm
Must be Lamont and Rolo running the place.
http://fakestev...er.blogspot.com
I got an interseting point- there is all this hoopla about facebook and the networking aspect of it..What needs to to gauged is that how many successful relationships(business or personal) spawned off these networking sites. That way user knows before hand that if he wants to network for business, where to go, if he wants a partner, where to go. This would be more performance based that publicity based.
The reason I say this is because any networking site spawned from stanford will definitely beat out a bunch when it will come to business networking.
Any comments?
Wellsphere: setting a new standard for FAIL!
I think main problem is obesity and excessive substance abuse and Sexual involvement. All can be reduced through proper counselling. May be experts should be enrolled into the community and regular bulletins on how to beat stress and other illnesses could be delivered by them.
http://tekno-wo...ld.blogspot.com
The irony is that in addition to producing world class geeks, Stanford also produces world class athletes. Look at their basketball and womens volleyball teams, plus the 17 Olympic medal wining students… unlike, erhm, *coughMITcough* another startup producing school.
My guess is this is Stanford way of starting the next “facebook”.
I think it sounds like a pretty good idea. Anytime you can give students and others an avenue to promote living a healthier lifestyle, if they choose, it sounds like it could be a good thing.
Yeah… if you have to give away scholarships to get people to come to your school, you’ll probably have more athletes.
First of all, has anyone taken a look at the actual Wellsphere Website? It launched in January and still has hardly any traffic. Maybe that’s be because the navigation sucks, the concept is poorly executed, and the only people commenting/posting/etc. are either employees or paid?
Second of all, as a former Stanford student, it’s not clear why I need ANOTHER site to network. There are so many e-mail lists, student clubs, etc. with really strong infrastructure. Why would I want to start using a two-bit community site instead of the resources that are already available.
Finally, if you look at the promotional video, Caitlin is PAID by Wellsphere to do promotion and Miri Englander is Ron Gutman. This site will fade into non-existence within 6 months. It’s a last ditch effort from dopes who run Wellsphere.
I applaud Wellsphere for the deal…I do however question whether it will actually get usage and pickup by Stanford grads. Just because you launch a community doesn’t mean that folks will just go there, and as pointed out above, it’s not like Stanford doesn’t have a host of existing online and offline resources for their students.
Good luck – I admire the goal.
doug
http://www.dailystrength.org
A lot of people are slamming this but I thought it largely a resource for faculty and staff. Since when are internal programs to increase health and fitness attempting to be the next “facebook” ?
Did I miss something?
I go to Stanford and I’ve never heard of this. Thanks, TechCrunch! Now I can go get healthy on the internet!
Wellsphere struck payday by signing Stanford.
http://www.meetingflex.com
Custom Social Networks
What about the original launch of Wellsphere? Sure, their goals may be good, but the implementation is awful. See the original TC article and especially the host of comments: http://www.tech...hes-wellness-2/
The ultimate irony – sit around all day reading about wellness on the Internet – the reason you’re out of shape in the first place. I think wellness starts by TURNING OFF the computer and heading outside, not by going to a website.
Very interesting website. Also, found another website (www.healthbase.com), which connects people to low cost high quality medical care worldwide. For major surgeries, the cost savings are over 70%. They offer over 200 procedures in 7 countries. You can find their customer testimonial videos online at: https://www.hea...estimonials.jsp
OK. BeWell@Stanford is powered by Wellsphere, but what is Wellsphere powered by? Maybe Wheaties? Or Red Bull?
That is an interesting initiative by Stanford. There is an increasing need to constantly educate people on taking care of themselves.