Three months ago Steve Case’s Revolution Health sold for $100 million or so to Waterfront Media (after raising $200 million in venture capital). Consolidation continues today with the HealthCentral acquisition of Wellsphere, which we first covered in early 2007. The deal should be announced on Wednesday.
Wellsphere brings its 4 million or so monthly unique visitors to the table. The site also has 300,000 health‐related articles, over 250,000 health‐related images, and nearly 20,000 health and healthy living videos.
The size of the deal is not being disclosed. Wellsphere has raised $3 million in funding from Gemini Israel Funds and Woodrow Myers. HealthCentral has raised a whopping $50 million in capital from Sequoia Capital, Polaris Venture Partners, IAC and Carlyle Group.
Remember in the late 1990s when the Gesundheit dot com got funded? Problem was nobody could spell the domain.
I realize you deleted my last post. I was just saying you should have fought back. Even if you get arrested in Germany the US government can get you out.
What does that have to do with HealthCentral buying Wellsphere?
Then what’s their next plan after buying it?
I wonder if Gemini retunred their investment on the deal.
This area can not consolidate fast enough to create any real scale because with every new merger there is a new health based venture that begins in its stead. The Health category online will become like the Business category offline — oft crowded but within a market that can support it. In other words, these mergers are fool-hearty because they will not produce the scale to put fear in future competitors.
http://www.ebiz...articles/health
The new site design is definitely cleaner as promised, very nice!
Wellsphere seems to have a good knowledge base generating a fair amount of revenue. I wonder why it had to consolidate with HealthCentral?
All those health sites with massive funding seem to have no way of making significant revenues, and Wellsphere is one of them. I think niche sites like http://www.mydochub.com has better chances, albeit less revenues, but smaller overhead.
Thanks for the news post – would have liked to have gotten more of your opinion on it Mike. Wellsphere was doing very well so they got snapped up. Agree with Steven though that this market will stay fragmented for a few more years yet – still only just scratching the surface in innovation here.
Interesting. I wrote a blog about the future of healthcare and self-diagnosis in the online space a while back. It will be interesting to see how far some of these services can go to cut down on the need for home health services and doctor visits. A more informed public can do a lot.
Here is the piece, http://zachhell...elp-healthcare/
congrats, chris and ron.
I am listed at Wellsphere in addition to my own blog page with a link back, although my participation as an expert is limited though as I am a “tech” person who can offer advice on the Health IT side of things.
They do market well as it took several emails and follow ups before I finally did connect with the site, so they have something going in the right direction there.
Like everything else out there, too many choices and consolidation is the name of the game to keep audiences these days.
Congrats to the team at Wellsphere!
Thanks for the news Michael.
It’s nice to see more news about health related sites!
Great buy. HealthCentral has an incredibly smart management and I think they will continue to be something different in the health space. These guys are just the right size to try new things with an audience that will tell them whether is works on not.
No doubt there is a lot of opportunity in the health space, and my bet is that HealthCentral gets it right.
Oh, and webmd stinks.
No, Gemini probably isn’t getting their money back. It is far lower exit than expected, as additional funding was out of the question. They still had something to sell, so good for them!
Wellsphere has been stealing content for a while with its ponzi scheme. Read this sample pitch:
Hi Jeanne,
I was searching for the best medical bloggers when I discovered your blog at http://assertivepatient.com/. I want to tell you I think your writing is fantastic — I really liked your post on Life With Cancer, “Time to Come Clean”. My name is Dr. Geoff Rutledge, and I’ve taught and practiced Internal and Emergency Medicine for over 25 years at Harvard and Stanford medical schools. I’m also the Chief Medical Information Officer at Wellsphere (www.wellsphere.com), where we are building a network of the web’s leading health bloggers, and I think you would be a great addition.
Wellsphere is a fast growing, next-generation online platform that is revolutionizing the way people find and share health and healthy living information and services. Our platform connects millions of users with the valuable insights and knowledge from health leaders and knowledgeable writers like you.
We are now launching a new health community on Breast Cancer, and I would like to invite you to be a featured blogger for this community. By joining our network of hundreds of leading health and healthy living bloggers, you will be in great company, and will benefit from exposure to the expanded audience of the Wellsphere community. When you join, we also will feature you on our very popular WellBlog (http://www.well...here.com/blog.s), with a link back to your blog.
We will republish the postings you’ve already written for you (through your RSS feed), and feature them not only on the Breast Cancer community pages of the site, but also within a new dynamic magazine-like Wellsphere360 section, where we give users a comprehensive view of expert information, news, videos, local resources, and member postings on topics you write about. Your profile page on the site will give you special status as a featured blogger in the Breast Cancer community. If you are an active contributor, we also will feature you on our homepage at http://www.wellsphere.com.
By connecting to the Wellsphere platform, you will greatly expand the audience for your postings and attract additional readers to your blog. Also, your posts will link back to your blog, so you will benefit from Wellsphere’s high ranking and large readership interested in your topic, which will give you more traffic, additional relevant audience, and a higher ranking for your blog.
If you would like to be a featured blogger in the Breast Cancer community, just send me an email to Dr.Rutledge@wellsphere.com. You can see a sample of a Wellsphere360 special section at http://www.well...etes-type-2.htm
Good health,
Geoff
Geoffrey W. Rutledge MD, PhD
Chief Medical Information Officer
Wellsphere, Inc.
http://www.wellsphere.com
Mike, it’s kind of strange to see comments closed for your next post. So I take the freedom to post my comment here.
First off, I feel sorry you have been spit at. I don’t know why someone would do this, but things happen. In every crowd there are a couple of psychos and nobody can arrest them before they’ve committed a crime (luckily, there’s no such thing as a thought-crime yet). As a public figure, you probably have to live with such (rare) incidents. GWB (shoe) and Bill Gates (cake) and many others also had. Public figures inevitably polarize and tend to have many friends, but also many enemies.
I do think however that calling for arms is not an appropriate reaction as it increases polarization (see Gaza/Israel) and feeds the vicious circle of violence. Escalation is hardly a solution, it’s de-escalation. Having said this, I have a hard time to understand why your pouring gas into the fire with your following statement:
“being spat on by some unhappy European entrepreneur we didn’t write about.”
If you don’t know the person who spat in your face, how can you know it was a) a European b) entrepreneur c) who’s unhappy as you didn’t write about his enterprise?
To me as a reader, this sounds very speculative and probably rather provokes more additional hate than that it helps avoid such incidents in the future. It really doesn’t look like a wise reaction, though I can understand it from an emotional point of view.
I’m not saying you have to stop making clear and bold statements or hold back with your personal opinion. Staying close to the facts is important however.
Your statement above probably insults many people (basically all European entrepreneurs who feel underrepresented on TC, which are likely many) without actually punishing that single guy (of many conference participants) who spat on you. Perhaps this reaction was exactly what he was hoping for? I.e. making you shoot against all European entrepreneurs instead of targeting the one and only misbehaving guy? In that case, you would have just lost the battle. As shooting against European entrepreneurs will hardly make them feel sorry for you, even in this case, and it will make you lose the ability to criticize them where it’s legitimate as they’ll only remember you firing into the whole crowd instead of at those who really deserve it.
Food for thought. Get back soon!
On Better Health with Dr. Val today, “How the Health Blogosphere Was Scammed”: http://getbette...mmed/2009.01.28
So many of my fellow diabetes bloggers were taken by Wellsphere! I personally had my vlogs reprinted without permission. Now they’ve sold out for money with content that they perpetuate to be owned by them, which isn’t.
Nice try Arrington…if the comments are closed on the spitting/death threat post, I’ll take the liberty of posting here. Take all the time you need to recover from the BS you’ve put up with lately. Nobody deserves to be the recipient of what you’ve described. The fact of the matter is that the TC loyal following is generally supportive of the TC “tell-it-like-it-is” philosophy. You and the other writers have always demonstrated accountability for your actions and comments. And that goes a long way in my book. You provide a valuable mix of news and opinion/commentary – and you’re often the first to admit when you’ve been wrong (See “Clown Co.”) The things you’ve been subjected to are inexcusable. In this country, whether your opinion is right or wrong, it is constitutionally valid. Getting spat on and receiving physical threats is grounds for water-boarding if you ask me. I hope the bad guys get what’s coming to them and that you carry on at the high-level that we’ve come to know and respect. Cheers to you and the staff, and enjoy your vacation. We’ll be here when you get back!
There are assholes who are beyond help. Don’t sweat the spitting incident. Sometimes you just have to realize that some people are very wrong in the head (some being more than anyone is comfortable with!). Hope you get some peace with your rest
smells like mercy to me.
if you follow wellsphere over time you’ll find some very disturbing posts about the founders and the company.
my guess they pumped up the visitors using some ‘technology’ (ohmmm) which will blow in HealthCentrals’ face in a few months.
there really isn’t any activity on that site.
we’ll be hearing more of this….
This article from Seeking Alpha from the past summer summarizes the issue in online health quite well.
http://seekinga...line-for-pharma
I was actually hired to work for Wellsphere through an ad on Craigslist I answered back in 2007. They needed writers to help launch their Beta version of the site. I spoke on the phone to a man who said he was from Stanford University. We negotiated a per-article payment agreement of I think $3/per article, no less than 30 articles per week was the workload. I was paid by check each month and probably made around $800 total before being “let go” after they didn’t need me anymore.
I was contacted by a man on myspace warning me that Wellsphere’s owner, Ron Gutman, was an asshole, scammer, and all-around jerk, but since I didn’t have to face him on a daily basis like the guy who contacted me (I telecommuted), I didn’t pay it much mind as I needed the money. They never sent mass flattery emails and always paid me on time, but I was disappointed when I was let go and felt a bit used.
Do with that story what you will.