A Different Perspective on the Sale of Wellsphere
(To my patient-readers: feel free to pass this one up. It’s aimed at my fellow healthcare bloggers who have been participating in a program begun by Wellsphere. Wellsphere made a business move that is quite unpopular and has made many members of the health blogosphere very cranky….)
I’ve pondered this for two days now. I try not to be quick to pull the trigger, and I generally give cummupances some thought… but now it seems like it’s time to share those thoughts with my fellow professionals and healthcare bloggers. I can’t be the only one who thinks this way….
Some of you are over-the-top upset at the sale of Wellsphere to Health Central because you feel as if someone has now made money off your work.
You’re right. They have.
Some of you are “I told you so-ing,” practically with glee, as if you’ve had some great revelation that yes! They DID want to make money! As if you knew there was something sinister when you were contacted by Geoff Rutledge and asked to participate.
You’re right. They did want to make money.
But I ask you — is making money a bad thing? It’s a trick question, so don’t answer just yet.
I bring to you a different perspective. I don’t ask you to agree with me. I just ask you to consider a different point of view for a moment.
I’ll begin by asking you a question: why do you blog? Why do you write or broadcast or podcast or videocast online?
Most of you will answer at least a portion of the same answer I would give. I blog because it allows me to offer information to others, and share my perspective. I blog to help patients understand the dysfunction of American healthcare and improve their ability to access the excellent care that does exist (when they can find it.) I blog because it helps me drive people to my other work online — at my personal website (that houses my newspaper columns), my radio show website (that houses podcasts of the show I host), and my About.com website (that houses a little bit of everything.)
I don’t blog to make money. My personal blog does earn me (and I’m not kidding) about $1.52 each month from syndication. But I never did begin blogging to make money from my blog. I blog for exposure.
So when Wellsphere came along, I saw it as an opportunity to maximize exposure. And it has done that for me, according to my stats. In fact, my blog numbers (about 4,000 people per month) doubled when my blog began to appear on Wellsphere.
Wellsphere is a business. I knew they would make money. Wellsphere never made me any promises of payment. I never expected to get any payment. They haven’t stolen my content or anyone else’s. They have borrowed it. They have (and this is important) a NON-EXCLUSIVE right to it. That means I can do whatever I want to with mine, too. And you can do whatever you want to with your writing, too. Even sever your relationship with Wellsphere if that’s what you choose.
Yes – they are in business to make money. That was why they built the site. You must have known that when you signed on. Why on earth would they build it if they didn’t intend to make money from it? It certainly wasn’t out of the goodness of their hearts!
And most of you, my fellow bloggers, have an income stream, too. However, I’ll bet none of you makes a living from healthcare blogging! We all make our living in other ways, and blogging is one of those tools responsible for helping us make that living (or, maybe, helping us to cope with it?). Knowing that, then increased exposure can only be a good thing.
Yes, yes… I’ve heard that the owner can be a real SOB. I have heard that people changed jobs, got fired, weren’t happy with their tenure working there. I am sorry for them. But this is not that, and we are not them.
At the end of the day, Wellsphere hasn’t done anything devious. They are making money. There was no hidden agenda except, perhaps, that they passed us off to Health Central. That was unexpected, but other than that, the relationship hasn’t changed at all. They are publishing our blogs, aren’t giving us any cash, but we continue to gain exposure for our work.
In fact, the only real difference is that now we will get even more exposure.
Would I like it if they sent me a check? You bet! Would I like to share in that big payoff? Of course!
But…. I don’t fault Wellsphere for making what was purely a business decision. I actually applaud their ability to do something positive in this horrible economic climate.
Above all else, I’m happy to know that even MORE patients, those who need help, and those who can contribute to this blog full of ideas, will find the opportunity through Health Central.
As I said when I began — I don’t ask you to agree with me. I ask only that you understand a different point of view. Hopefully the mutual respect remains. We can always agree to disagree.
Trisha
I don’t think it’s whether they wanted to make money or not. It’s a question of whether they tricked bloggers into giving up the rights to their intellectual property for the gain of Wellsphere, without being upfront about what they were doing.
As someone who has personal experience as an employee of Wellsphere (Hellsphere, as we like to call it) and who has read dozens of blogs complaining about the treatment they received, I do feel sorry for people that feel they’ve been duped. I hope that you can understand their position, too.
-Mark Johnson, former Wellsphere product manager
Mark,
Yes — I am very sorry for how you were treated. I actually mentioned that in my post.
But I believe you are incorrect about the intellectual rights. We did not forfeit them at all. We agreed to share them and not get paid for them, but we maintain our copyrights and maintain all our rights to do whatever else we want to do with them.
Nobody (that I know of) on the blog side has received “bad” treatment. We just didn’t make any money on the sale. But we never expected to be making money anyway.
I wish you well and hope that your current position is all you hoped it would be. Thanks for posting.
Trisha
Trisha,
You’re not the only one expressing a different perspective. See – http://mormonmd.wordpress.com/2009/01/29/the-business-of-health-blogging/
I write for HealthCentral and thought that this was an interesting move. To be selfish, I sincerely hope that it doesn’t negatively impact my freelance work for them. That’s my take; and no, I didn’t sign-up with Wellsphere when approved 8 months ago.
Lisa
Lisa,
Thanks for the heads up. I’ve just read and commented on the Doc’s blog.
Keep up your great work at Health Central, and your great blog, too
Trisha
Hi Trisha,
I think the issue is much deeper than the fact that most people who signed up for Wellsphere did not carefully read or understand the TOS, and that money was made on their content/community.
Look at it this way: bloggers were led to believe that their content was being recognized as having special merit (they were sent a “personal” email by a PHYSICIAN, praising their work, and offering to feature it on a large platform with millions of readers). Many bloggers trusted the MD’s credentials and probably did not carefully review the fine print because of them. They added the Wellsphere button to their blogs in gratitude for the acknowledgment of their work.
Soon they discovered that their blogs were not actually featured as they had expected, links back to their site were hard to come by, and no substantial traffic accrued. They looked for a way out, and many were met with silence by this MD who had praised their work to the skies to get them to join. For some, months passed between the time they requested to leave and their content was deleted from the site.
Then these poor souls discover that the emails of praise (that they thought were crafted to them personally) turn out to be form letters sent to anyone with a blog. There is no actual “quality control” (as demonstrated by the email accidentally sent to my webmaster, calling him an “Everyday Hero” in healthcare). They feel shame and embarrassment… the Wellsphere button they proudly displayed is now a badge of dishonor, a witness to their gullibility.
Then Health Central Network announces the acquisition of Wellsphere with a quote from the CEO that the “bloggers are happy” and that the stickiness of the community will “allow them to improve their advertising ROI.”
The bloggers in the network read the TOS for the first time and realize that Wellsphere has the right to sell their content. They get nothing – just more disappointment and betrayal, with the new company viewing their personal community as a mere way to improve advertising ROI.
I hope this helps you understand why many are hurt and feeling betrayed. It’s about so much more than the $. That was just the last straw.
I for one am most troubled by the role the MD credentials played in this. It is a sad day for us all.
I do think Dr. Val is right. The form letters and the good vibes sensation the site gives off has lost a lot of its luster. They do flatter relentlessly. The personal touch is all veneer, as she states. When I got the offer from them it looked and felt like some snake oil feelgood pyramid scheme. It was like health blogger Amway. It just so happens that I signed on anyway because in spite of this, I didn’t really see how it would end up harming me, and the fact that I am a little neurotic and even suspicious praise was better than no praise for my fledgling blog start up.
Now I feel bad precisely because I see now that my MD gives these people credibility, in all their insincere glory. At the same time, at least I’m putting valid content out there, even if I can’t speak for the rest of the site, find the quality wildly varying and uneven, think the design is tacky, and find it extremely difficult to navigate. Maybe I just need to get over myself. I don’t know. Maybe Health Central will right the ship. Who’s to say.
I’m sorry, but the money isn’t the only issue … and I’m dumbfounded that no one seems to be giving much attention to the other problems surrounding Wellsphere’s policies …
They contacted me, as they did all of the others, telling me that I would have a chance to answer other people’s questions, and have my own answered. I thought it would be something like WebMD, and I was delighted to join.
In short order, I discovered that we, all of us in the general public, whether we had any medical knowledge at all, were *encouraged* to answer as many questions as possible. I just cut and pasted this from my account:
They presented me, a simple patient blogger with no medical training or education, as an:
They had no idea what I was saying in the questions I replied to, because there was no medical professional oversight, except by random chance. A large portion of the questions never were answered, or were answered by people who were themselves stumbling around in unfamiliar territory … experts indeed!
Imagine the harm that could be done … or that probably HAS been done!
I believe that Wellsphere dragged as many people into their trap as they could, abandoned them once they were there (that’s another story I could tell you), left them open to what could well be devastating medical advice from people who aren’t qualified to “practice online medicine” – or any other kind of medicine … and then, once they had a large enough bunch of gullible boobs, they sold them off, lock, stock, and barrel.
This isn’t just dishonest, this is criminal.
There’s a much larger, more sinister, picture than Blog Scraping. They are completely conscienceless.
Moof, Doc and Dr. Val,
You have all made excellent points, and yes, I agree with them all. Do I feel “taken”? yes, I do. Do I think the 1000+ of us who were, in effect, flattered into participation were sold a bill of goods? Yes, I do.
Moof — your point may be the best one yet — that the very people who need the advice the most may not be getting it. THAT upsets me.
But with all the dispersions we are casting on Wellsphere, it seems to me that maybe that makes the acquisition by Health Central a benefit. Because it means that the situation we used to be in with a mercenary, dispassionate (and potentially harmful) netizen corporation, has now been transformed (through no efforts or even realization of necessity of our own) to a relationship with a dignified and respected corporation. And to Moof’s point — hopefully they will vet and rearrange the “experts” into something that is truly helpful to the site’s participants.
Thanks to you all for posting. It will be interesting to see how this all shakes out over the next several months.
Trisha
Would the perpetrators of this scheme do well under a full personal background and criminal check? I wonder.
There also seems to be quite a few people who were misled. That is not some odd coincidence.
Why not take up contributions to pay a law firm to sue?
Why not take out an ad in major HC journals or the New York Times alerting the medical and lay public to this scheme?
Why not conduct a full background and criminal check on the perps? Could they withstand such scrutiny?
I’m just a garden blogger who was contacted by Wellsphere with the form letter flattery about three weeks ago. I smelled a rat and did not join.
http://outsideclyde.blogspot.com/2009/01/fog-on-internet.html
It was obvious to me that their intended business plan was to build the site’s content and traffic and then sell it for a profit. Writing legal mumbo jumbo for TOS, that bloggers may or may not read and understand, that makes theft legal, doesn’t make theft ethical.
This is a real reflection of the ethics that permeate the business world today. Profits at any cost and they don’t care who they screw in the process.
http://outsideclyde.blogspot.com/2009/01/well-well-wellsphere.html
Trisha you can try and find some way to make Wellsphere’s business model acceptable, but to do that you have to ignore the intentional content grab and equal copyright privilege they granted themselves. Ask yourself, who is in a better position to profit off of all this free content?
Christopher,
I absolutely do understand the business model. In fact, I had a pretty good idea of what their business model was before I signed on. I spent 20+ years in business (marketing, later internet marketing) before I became a patient advocate, and have a good understanding of the many ways a company can turn a profit. When I could see no advertising on the site, it was clear they had other intentions. Creating an asset to be sold was about the only option.
So what else is new? Ethics aside (need I remind you what is going on in banks in this country?) — a business model is exactly what it is — an intent to make money. For so many bloggers to sign on, then get upset when the site was sold, strikes me as a little naive.
My point, then, is simply this: I haven’t made money from my blog, and I didn’t expect to make money from it. The payoff — my “profit” — is exposure. And I expect to / hope to / will be surprised if I don’t get even more exposure through Health Central.
I absolutely understand that many of my fellow healthcare bloggers feel blindsided, and I can absolutely understand why they would feel that way. But it doesn’t change the reality of the original situation. Wellsphere was being built to be profitable in some way, and that is exactly what happened, no matter how upsetting or unethical it may seem to those who don’t understand internet business models.
I do thank you for posting, Christopher.
Trisha
PS — your photography is absolutely breathtaking. Having lived in your neck-o-the-woods for many years (OK – on the Tennessee side of your mountain) it makes me long for my Appalachian days. Thanks for sharing. I’ll return to enjoy frequently.