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Will Health Bloggers Foil the Acquisition of Wellsphere by HealthCentral?
Featured in: Hippocrates
Health and medical blogosphere is buzzing with outrage about Wellsphere's use of their content. What is going to happen next?Normally I do not do rapid-fire, real-time blogging. Time is always the issue and I like to get a full picture of what is going on before having my say. But the intensity of Wellsphere blogstorm is the reason to jump the gun.
I have quietly followed Wellsphere since the earliest exposes on Valleywag and Uncov. Last summer, when several bloggers contacted me with concerns about Wellsphere promotion tactics (more on that later) I still did not think it was worthy of public comment. But now that the acquisition by HealthCentral has been announced and Dr. Val penned an excellent summary of why health bloggers have a problem with Wellsphere, I feel obligated to share my perspective.
Wellsphere epitomizes all that is wrong with "Health 2.0 movement"
Why would I say such a thing? Let's get started with economics of the deal.
Many bloggers felt cheated by the company taking their content, not being upfront about the deal and making money from their hard work. They have every right to feel this way about how they were treated! The irony however is that Wellsphere was hardly a successful business and their approach was not just unethical, it was extremely foolish. The equivalent of stealing lollipops from kids in broad daylight. You will get busted, it will get noisy and everyone will know what despicable person you are (verbatim description of Wellsphere CEO).
So why did Wellsphere sell the company and for how much?
The terms of the sale have not been disclosed, but all signs point to this being a fire-sale. That is what happens when the company runs out of money, has to shut down and fire employees, but instead hands assets for pennies on the dollar to save face. Why do I believe that was the case at Wellsphere? Let's look at their traffic. I would ignore the announced claim of 4 million monthly visitors and use independent data from Compete. Assuming 3 million pageviews (visits by pages per visit) at pretty generous assumption of $10 CPM (revenue per 1000 page views) they should be making about $30K per month. Certainly not enough to pay for a dozen employees in Silicon Valley. Given that they raised $3M two years ago they should be out of money by now. Recent twitter conversations (part 1, part 2) confirm this theory, just as the post from a former employee about life at HellSphere.
So does this mean bloggers have no grounds for outrage? Wrong!
I do not think the problem is in the fact that someone is making money from your work, the real question is whether you are being treated fairly and upfront. Google makes a lot more money off anyone on the Internet than Wellsphere but are we as outraged? Employers make money off employees but (in most cases) everyone knows what the deal is and enters it knowingly. Anyone who sells you anything makes a profit margin - that is all expected. What most bloggers found to be the most galling and distasteful is how Wellsphere handled its pitch, in Dr. Rob's words it was "flatter and finch". Here is the big problem with Health 2.0 companies - they act warm and fuzzy with their members, while their real priority is profits and shareholders. Once the community finds out that the profit is more important that warm feelings, guess what they have every right to feel abused. The real problem with Wellsphere (and a few more Health 2.0 companies) was misrepresentation and fibbing. Once people decide you are a crook, it is over Charlie.
Does this mean bloggers should not syndicate their content? Depends.
Of course you should never share your content with companies that impose onerous terms (look at the rights Wellsphere asked for!), and professional writers are allergic to the idea that someone may somehow profit from their work. Still there is value in getting wider promotion and distribution, even if this just gets your name out even if people are not always clicking back to your blog. If you have a blog, chances are you want to toot your horn and this means using all available platforms - as long as they do not make you feel cheated. The problem with Wellsphere is that they took very respectable ideas and turned them into a joke. In effect they have been pissing in the well and now it is coming back to bite them.
What is the difference in approaches to content aggregation?
Here is something to think about. Nature.com also happens to aggregate blogs. In fact, they republish original contents (excerpts), similar to what Wellsphere does. I am not even sure if they are asking for permission (have not checked). In fact, original Dr. Val's story about Wellsphere ended up as the top health story and Dr. Val is rather happy than angry. Why is that? Nature is not making a pressure sale and is not conducting itself in ways people find offensive. So the benefits of broader distribution take precedence over fears for many.
I should add that Trusted.MD Network also syndicates blogs (being one of the first to do that), but we learned about sensitive community relations early on, after making some initial mistakes. Though we have not been aggresively promoting the blog directory for a while, I was somewhat peeved that Wellsphere's tactics soured more bloggers on the idea of syndication and they asked to remove their feeds from Trusted.MD. That's fine - no biggie. But another claim from Wellsphere is more disturbing. They had the gall to claim organizing the "first-ever health blogger conference", while we have been doing this for two years in 2006 and 2007! Still, being copied is flattering, even if you are copied by complete D-bags.
If Wellsphere is a "Rotten Apple" what does it mean for HealthCentral?
The whole reason the controversy has erupted now was the acquisition. Unlike Wellsphere, HealthCentral is a reputable name which is now at risk of getting tainted. I do not blame anyone there, if you have a chance to buy significant traffic at a fire sale price, why not go for it? The problem now is that in addition to buying a property they are buying ill will of health blogosphere - which shows no signs of cooling down. While HealthCentral CEO said when the deal was announced he believed the majority of health bloggers are happy, the firestorm on blogs and twitter showed that the unhappy bloggers have simply been silent - right until now. What can happens to an acquisition dependent on goodwill of member bloggers?
There was a relevant precedent about two years ago. A professional blogger community, Performancing.com agreed to be acquired by PayPerPost.com, detested by many bloggers for promoting undisclosed, credibility-busting paid reviews. The bloggers attracted to Performancing.com which originally showed so much promise felt cheated and betrayed. They started bailing and filling Internet with posts on how much they hate PayPerPost and the Performancing team that sold them out. Soon PayPerPost realized that the whole rationale of the deal has tanked and called off the acquisition. Does this remind us of something? Wellsphere's problems now would be owned by HealthCentral. The damage done to the reputation of the company with contributors and advertisers can easily outweigh the gains.
Do you think the acquisition goes through in the end? What would you think of HealthCentral if they go ahead with the deal?
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Unless you’re a part of the health care blogosphere, you probably haven’t been following the incredible firestorm that health care bloggers have created around the acquisition of Wellsphere by HealthCentral. Here’s the cliff notes ve...
I was horrified to learn this week that Wellsphere was bought by HealthCentral. My only consolation is the possibility that it was a fire sale and the founders made no money. Rumor has it that Wellsphere was shopping around for...
Comments (25)
Yup, I know about the deal, but do not have any details.
Not sure though if they got paid much if at all. A common tactic with Silicon Valley startups is to give away their stuff to a first customer to gain "validation", but I just do not have the info.
Bloggers could surely call Stanford, but I suspect their HR / Wellness office would not be impacted by the taint nearly as much as HealthCentral.
#3: Stanford Deal
I don't know about Stanford, but every University I know of is unbelievable risk averse both legally and reputationally. I have a hard time believing Stanford is different.
Who knows...
#4: Sleazy conduct
The most offensive aspect of this issue was hiding the Terms of Agreement in the "fine print", in effect. The approach to bloggers by seduction and use of relatively covert trapdoors they were likely to gloss over was sleazy and inexcusable. Does the good Dr. who ran this outfit do that when securing informed consent from patients?
Does he hide in the fine print items such as "during surgery, spare organs may be removed. The company can sublicense use of these organs to the highest bidder"?
No? Why not?
Finally, universities are good at covering up and stonewalling, not avoiding unethical behaviors of their employees and professors. For example, think of the Duke LaCrosse team scandal.
#5: Caveat Emptor
As I noted in my post, Wellsphere made it very clear what the terms were. I think the other side to this story is how people routinely click "I Accept" buttons without actually reading what the terms of service are. Dmitriy, your comparison with Health 2.0 is spot-on. People expect health companies to be warm and trust them without question, as these same organizations try to reflect some of the trusting aura that surrounds medicine proper (or, it used to... insurance companies have been dimming that light since managed care took over).
However, people need to read what they are agreeing to. This is the internet, baby, and the dogs are taking over.
A very interesting speculation, Dmitriy.
But if everyone involved, including the bloggers and HealthCentral, are hungry for pageviews and revenue (which they are), the revolt will be rather short.
All HealthCentral needs to do is make it easier for bloggers to opt out. Then they get to keep those who stick around. The vast majority will -- after all, it's "syndication."
Why would HealthCentral follow through on the deal? Because, as you yourself have so rightly pointed out so many times, this is a landscape full of past, present, and future losers.
It's not just that the scenery is cluttered with noisy "branding" artists who have no business model.
The true failure -- as you have also pointed out -- is that so many of them actually deliver little to no value or service whatsoever. Mix that with (in too many cases) a clear intent to skim and run, and you have an entire sector, perhaps an entire market, that is broken. HealthCentral management may be honorable, but they too are pissing into the wind.
An easy example of the low standards of performance: Go to any of the gazillion "specialty" health Web sites running Google AdSense ads. Packed around the very thin content (content virtually identical to that found in dozens of other locations) you will invariably find that about 9 out of 10 of the Google ads go to nothing related to the ad text.
Searching on breast cancer? Oh, here's an ad for "Find out about your options" that goes go "www.breast-cancer-options-for-you.info," which instantly redirects you to a completely different URL advertising a drug you've never heard of and which you have no ability to evaluate. The remaining ads are a cesspool of some of the worst, multi-layered link farms ever imagined this side of Nigeria.
The point is that HealthCentral isn't really innovating, and doesn't have any better idea how it will dig itself out than Wellsphere did. The main difference seems to be that they have much better VC connections. Well pardon me if I am not impressed.
Much like I would like to see certain financial masters of the universe get their due (a weekend in the old colonial stocks in the town square), I would be happy to see HealthCentral scuttle the Wellsphere deal. It would send an invigorating message.
But desperation will win the day instead.
@Roy, when I was solicited by Rutledge to give them the RSS feed to my blog, never did I have to click any button saying I accepted their Terms of Service. In fact, all I had to do was reply to Rutledge's email saying I wanted to be part of Wellsphere, and they would put together my profile for me. Their Terms of Service were not included in any email ever sent to me.
Should I have been more careful before granting them permission? Yes. But it was very sleazy how bloggers were recruited. I've also heard of several cases where the blogger did not give Wellsphere permission, never signed up with them, yet their content was syndicated anyway.
Hey Dmitriy, great post - I think you've got an interesting perspective on what's happening. I can't comment on whether or not the sale will (or should) go through - that's really not my place. But there was one thing you mentioned that I wanted to clarify: "professional writers are allergic to the idea that someone may somehow profit from their work."
As a full-time professional writer for more than 17 years, yes, I hate the idea of someone taking my work from me and profiting from it. And why shouldn't I? I make a living with my writing, so I don't want others to take advantage of that for their own gain.
That being said, I am often (usually, in fact) happy when someone links to me, and usually approve sites that ask for a single-story reprint from ChronicBabe. This project, for me, is more about making a living - in fact, that's my secondary goal. My primary goal is to help women with chronic illness live awesome lives in spite of being sick. So I happily share material, I often write items at other sites for little or no money, and I love to participate in online conversations.
It's when writers are taken advantage of that I have a serious complaint. And that seems to be what was happening at Wellsphere, unfortunately. The site is complicit in this, but so are the writers. Writing is a PROFESSION and folks who do it need to learn their rights and responsibilities - and that includes reading the fine print on any agreement you sign regarding the use of your writing work.
I'm not saying everyone who blogs needs to become a Serious Writer and get uptight about everything, but it pays to know the business at least well enough to protect yourself. You wouldn't drive a car without knowing the rules of the road; you wouldn't reach into a medicine cabinet and take the first pills you spot without knowing their ramifications. So why write - why put yourself and your ideas out in the universe - without understanding the bigger picture of what you're doing? Without knowing your rights and responsibilities?
We're certainly not the first industry to ask this question; it's been around since the early days of the web. The most wonderful thing about blogging is that ANYONE can do it; one of the worst things about it is that folks can do some really stupid, harmful things with words without realizing the impact of their actions.
I hope this entire incident inspires health bloggers to learn their rights, protect their work - and NOT get jaded into not sharing information and ideas. The potential downside here is that folks get scared into shunning collaboration, just like you mentioned, Dmitriy - and I would hate to see that happen. If everyone takes a pause, breathes deeply, and then looks at the bigger picture, I think health bloggers will see we can still have a rich community, and a shared voice and conversation in a way that helps all involved - and doesn't take advantage of anyone.
Thanks for keeping the conversation going!
Thanks to everyone for commenting, let me follow up -
@MedInformaticsMD: Interesting analogy with surgery. The way you describe the events sounds a like legal definition of fraud, which could have real consequences. Read Wikipedia definition of fraud and let us know what you think. Would this describe Wellsphere tactics?
@Roy: Great points, though I would argue that in "mainstream" healthcare system there is a lot more precedent on what flies and what does not. With "Health 2.0" the battle lines between users and shareholders are just starting to get drawn and could get ugly as conflicts are exposed.
@Anonymous (6): Thanks for your comments - you seem to have a great grasp of how Internet advertising really works! The dirty little secret is that direct response advertising (like AdSense) driving product sales is the only business model that truly works on the Internet right now - so we might as well get used to it. Yes, the deal makes great sense to HealthCentral from the perspective of getting lots of cheap contents to use as backdrop for remnant ad inventory - especially if Wellsphere cost nothing to them. However, *IF* they ever plan to move up the food chain to brand advertising they will have a significant problem - as brand marketers care about perceptions. Finally, given the questionable tactics Wellsphere used to get content, the level of outrage bubbling up, and the fact that most bloggers have not yet realized what deal they got into, HealthCentral might be creating some serious legal exposure that could blow up at them at any time, costing money, time and lost business opportunities. That is why I raised the possibility of the deal being scuttled to begin with.
@MaxJerz: Sounds like this could create legal jeopardy for Wellsphere?
@ChronicBabe: Jenny, as a professional writer you have every right to be allergic to people profiting from your work! I did not mean my reference to you as a detraction and have only so much space to explain myself. I would say however that the difference between 2009 and 1992 when you were starting your writing career is Internet self-publishing which is creating race to the bottom for content. There is something of an economic conflict between content creators and content aggregators (I play in both categories) and Internet business models right now favor aggregators. This is no biggie for most bloggers who do not expect to earn a living from their work, so they may not be as upset with syndication itself than with how they were treated. But in your case, IP rights are critical. My advice is not just to protect your work with copyright, but try to differentiate it and brand yourself uniquely and distinctively. But wait, you are already doing this as one and only Chronic Babe!
In addition to being a health blogger, I'm a lawyer, and this really raised my hackles. As MJ says, Wellsphere did not follow the accepted practice of having you "Click Here" to accept their terms of service - they simply sent you a highly complimentary email saying that they'd do it all for you if you said you wanted to be part of it - and if you said yes, they did it all for you. First thing you learn on the first day of law school is you don't have a contract without agreement! None of the bloggers signed up this way even had a chance to see the terms of service, Wellsphere didn't mention them, so the bloggers certainly didn't agree to them!
Their supposed assumption of an irrevocable license to the bloggers' copyrights is not valid under copyright law either. Such rights cannot be given up in TOS like this, no matter how many web sites try to build it into their TOS - you can only give these rights away explicitly in writing.
Dmitry, I would say Wellsphere's legal jeopardy is very real. This has all the classic attributes of a class action lawsuit!
That said, I have enormous respect for Health Central and expect them to treat the bloggers the way they treat their members and contributors now - with the highest of ethics and respect for law. Their TOS explicitly state that they make no claim to their members' copyrighted works!
I didn't receive any "click this to accept" the TOS either.
It was just emails and I too succumbed to multiple emails soliciting my blog.
To be honest, the TOS stuff is irritating but really, I never expected to make any money out of my blog's syndication. I expected readers.
I was promised increased traffic to my site yet when I emailed early on to ask why my posts linked back to Wellsphere rather than to my own blog I was told that the link to my blog could be found on my profile.
Why would anyone visit my blog if they could just stick around and read it on Wellsphere.
Anyhow, when everything hit the fan I decided to pull the plug.
Unlike many folks here, I'm not particularly angry with Wellsphere. I'm not stupid. I should have known better and frankly I should have known better than to respond initially to flattery and it was only sheer laziness that didn't have me pulling the plug sooner given that at best Wellsphere generated 3 or 4 visits a week to my blog's traffic.
Yoni
@Dmitriy: your reply to ChronicBabe got me thinking about aggregators vs creators. Seems analogous to the first 50 years of the music recording biz, where record labels required recording artists to hand over IP rights to their music & lyrics in order to get distributed. Interesting to think about the lessons to be learned.
#13: Wellsphere TOS
@MaxJerz, you are right; I looked back and the only explicit statement in the second email from Rutledge was "We will set up your profile if you don't already have one, and will connect to your RSS feed, so you don't have to do anything but give us permission to publish your content on our site (you retain copyright for your content). We don't require a particular schedule for posting, though we have invited you to become a Wellsphere health blogger based in part on your history of posting on your blog. "
I must have went on the Wellsphere site and noted the TOS there. Pretty sneaky and, as Megan Oltman said earlier, not legally binding. Class Action by EFF, maybe. Bloggers, as a group, would benefit from our own lobbyist. But it would be like herding cats.
@Roy, generally speaking on the Internet the conflict between aggregators and creators is not as pronounced as in the records industry - which for years was all-or-nothing, take-it-or-leave-it proposition. The scandal with Wellsphere is that they went ahead and applied record-industry tactics to blogosphere without realizing how this is going to blow up in their face.
I was unaware of these issues and I have now asked for my account and posts to be deleted from WellSphere.
Thanks.
#16: One Correction
I'll leave my full review of the situation to a blog post I'm writing. I do however want to correct your comparison to Performancing.com/PayPerPost as a similar example. I'm very familiar with that acquisition and PayPerPost backed out of the acquisition because Performancing.com didn't have the statistics package that PayPerPost needed and was told they had. It wasn't because of the backlash. The backlash from performancing.com was nothing for PayPerPost. Especially when you consider the backlash that PayPerPost had endured before that.
@EMR and HIPAA: Thanks for comments here and on your blog!
I am not privy to the behind-the-scenes discussions between PayPerPost and Peformancing, so I cannot testify to the cause-and-effect. I do remember though that Performancing did ship a decent blog metrics package (which I did evaluate) and PayPerPost mostly wanted access to lots of bloggers and their data to promote their full basket of monetization services. But anyways, that is ancient history.
I would also agree with your comment that there are many more problems in "Health 2.0" that what we see in this Wellsphere-HealthCentral deal. However, IMHO, this case is so far the most visible highlight of the inherent conflict between members and owners of any site that has anything to do with promoting and exploiting the "wisdom of the crowd". If anything, this will trigger further discussions of who is getting the raw deal, how (un)happy they are with it and how would they react.
Finally, you are right that we would not have this blowup if more bloggers did homework about what they are getting into. Yet, it was incumbent on Wellsphere and HealthCentral to manage the optics of the blogger relationships and how they are being perceived. Wellsphere and HealthCentral failed miserably in planning, anticipating and (to some extent) responding to the crisis. They created lots of ill will.
So this will be yet another case study on "crisis management".
Wellsphere deleted my account and content really quickly when I asked. I don't know if they normally do that now (I've seen elsewhere that people have had trouble in the past) or whether it was because I did a post on my blog saying why I was leaving.
If you request deletion of your account and it doesn't happen quickly - try posting to say that you're leaving, and why. I kept it civil and non-libelous but made it clear that I was unhappy with how they had gone about the whole thing.
Within a few hours of posting I got a chummy email from Dr Rutledge saying that my account was deleted and offering to talk to me in person by phone - I won't be taking him up on it, though.
PPP is ancient history, but they were more interested in their analytics tools than they were their bloggers. Sure, the bloggers were a benefit, but they already had more bloggers than they could support with paid opportunities. So, the analytics to measure the value of a blogger was what they were interested in acquiring. Comparing it to HealthCentral/Wellsphere I think that HealthCentral probably wanted the health care community more than the technology that Wellsphere used.
Like mikerm, Wellsphere deleted my blog feed and account profile quickly as well. I didn't necessarily want them to delete my account profile, but just stop pulling my blog posts. However, it wasn't worth the effort to tell them that after it was gone.
Tells me everything I need to know.
We signed up pretty early; like many, seduced by the promise of increased trafiic. Never really had reason to check on that until Dr Val blew the whistle; checking back, it appears that we never got ONE HIT from WS. Earlier this week, I wrote Chris, congratulaing him on the deal, outlining what we'd been promised vs what we received, and asked him "(c)an you tell me if there are any plans to change the way WS handles this issue and, if so, a time frame for this?"
This was his (non-)reply:
"Hey, Henry! Thanks so much for your note.
We’re looking now as we bring these great organizations together on the best ways to extend the voices of great thoughtleaders and experience sharing in every way we can. So stay tuned!
I’ve also cced Dr. Geoff Rutledge, our chief medical officer and Scott Rothrock, our head of Technology and active in the wellsphere partnership, in case you have further questions ."
'Nuff said.
I just replied, pulling the plug (I hope).
@mikerm: Thanks for sharing your deletion HOW-TO!
@EMR and HIPAA: I never heard anything on what PPP thought of Performancing analytics product. I thought the product was kind of neat, but quite redundant compared to what you can find in tools like Google Analytics today.
@hgstern: This just goes to show how a company like Wellsphere could turn a neutral or slightly positive blogger against themselves. Amazing case of "fire, ready, aim"!
#22: Follow-up
Received this from Dr Rutledge:
Hi Henry,
I wanted to let you know that we have deleted your profile and all of your posts from Wellsphere.
I’m disappointed to hear that you’ve decided to leave our Health Blogger Network and wanted to invite you to connect with me personally if you have any questions or would like to share your thoughts on your decision to leave the Network.
Please feel free to call me on my cell phone at [redacted], or send me your number and some times that are convenient for you, and I'll be happy to call you.
I should mention that your content has been deleted completely from our databases and your profile is no longer available on the site. However, because our servers have a temporary ‘cache’ of our pages, some links to your articles may still be accessible for a period of 1 - 2 weeks until all the system caches time out on all our servers.
Cheers,
Geoff
Interestingly, there doesn't seem to have been any effect on our traffic, which I believe proves the point.
#23: bad guys
And that isn’t even the tip of it.
The real scam by wellsphere is that they tell you to put their widget on your blog which means you’re linking to their site while they put a rel nofollow on the link to your blog from their site… that is a nasty SEO trick.
I've been getting a lot of unsolicited email lately from PR firms representing people or companies in the health sector and inviting me to blog about their clients. Most of them are nothing to do with what I blog about, and some are diametrically opposed (I blog on alternatives to drugs, and I get invitations to blog about new drugs).
Anyone else getting this?
I also notice that they usually don't have opt-out links. I thought that was legally required these days?
I have joined the group of Wellsphere on Facebook today.
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One thing you missed is the sweetheart deal that Gutman struck with Stanford. Stanford has kept them afloat and is likely a significant source of revenue. Likely not anything to brag about, but also likely non-trivial.
Should the bloggers call Stanford? One thing is for sure, a University enterprise client is much more likely to care about indirect taint.