Health Social Networks

You probably realized by now that I'm a big fan of the Health Social Networks gang. I'm an advocate and a strong believer, but that doesn't mean I like everything that's being done…

I don't really like iMedix. I know I'm not the first to say that and bigger bloggers have done so in the past (iMedix combines health search and community — but does neither well, iMedix: Social search that creeps me out ) but I just have to get it out of my system.

I first heard the name at the 2007 Crunchies when they were announced as Best new startup. I got to tell you a lot of heads moved at that announcement. Could it be such a wonderful company with so many fans but none the less nobody in the audience ever heard of them?? I mean the 'Best new startup' is a minor trophy at the Crunchies, but not that minor. Later that day I got the chance to listen to the entrepreneurs talk to the media. I have to say that I liked them. They seemed eager, energetic and with that 'spark' in their eyes everyone talks about. But is that enough?

Every time I log into iMedix I get the feeling that there is really nothing there.

The search results are OK and even if I let the beer get too much to my head and say it's a little better than google (it's not, but let's just play) would anyone remember to visit that site and not go for the BIG G to look for stuff??? It doesn't work like that! and that's not even the problem…..

iMedix homepage says "Members of the iMedix community help each other by sharing their experiences". That is not what I see there. Trying to get someone to talk to you is hard, you're most likely to find yourself talking to an iMedix employee, an eager teenager or just someone like you who's trying to find others who know something about his condition (which is not the info you are looking for…). There is no collective data, no shared experience and well… nothing really. Can you even compare this to a visit to DailyStrength or Medhelp? No way.

I visited the site 3 times yesterday, hours apart. On all 3 visits to the home page under “Featured Questions” (you’d think they’d be special) I got a question that was actually an email address this got my curiosity flowing and I clicked on the ‘Featured Question’ to find that the meaningful question (only an email address of someone who is probably a spammer) was answered twice by ….the same guy. Needless to say that the answers are not any better than the question. I got that at 3 out of 3 times during the day!!

Is this the activity you’d expect from the Best new startup of 2007, 10 months after voted as such??

I wasn't going to give up on my research there. After all they did win a prize. I checked them out in Alexa and Quantcast.

At first glace their alexa graph was about to change everything I thought. It's growing. Tremendously…. but hey… have you ever seen a traffic surge that looks like that? My only guess would be paid traffic. You pay - people come, budget runs out - they don't. There is nothing wrong with buying traffic. It's legal. Everyone does it and it works in many cases, provided you paid for quality traffic…. scrolling down the page (still alexa) I might have gotten a clue on the quality of the traffic. 3 Month average page views: 1.25. that's right folks – an award winning social network with 1.25 page views per visitors. DailyStrength shows 7.79, PatientsLikeMe 5.9 etc'

So we know alexa isn't always right. I checked my favorite Quantcast. The picture here is a bit different. It looks like the sites' share of visits has been going down for almost 4 months now (same as compete estimates) and not as moody as alexa shows, but the interesting part is on the right side. Quantcast has two 'related' sections on the right side (Audience Also Visits, Audience Also Searches For) each of them with 15 items/sites. I consider it highly accurate and often use it when searching for companies. Out of 30 sites and keywords listed NOT A SINGLE ONE is related to health, social networks or iMedix in general. If you do the same check for most of the sites in my Health Social Networks List the ratio is 28 out of 30. I'm not really sure what that means but I know it ain't good ;-)

Final words

The Good:

1. Eager entrepreneurs.
2. UI looks professional and friendly.
3. An amazing seed funding that enables a lot of PR.

The Bad:

1. I couldn't find any value.
2. The data on traffic monitoring sites looks unflattering.
3. The 'beta' tag. If you're live for more than a year and still consider yourself beta something is not going right.

I wish the people in iMedix the best of luck and I would truly be happy to see them thrive (as I said they do look like nice people) but for now – I think iMedix is just not going anywhere.

dLife is the first of the niche social networks I’ll be covering and there is a good reason for that – it's a great site!

Disclaimer – I don’t have diabetes, don’t wish I had it, don’t plan on getting it later in life and I know very little about it. Now that we’ve done that lets look at the site.

dLife look and feel is a combination of a friendly looking homemade site (MDJunction) and the pro Web2.0 stylish ones (OrganizedWisdom). It is balanced and beautiful and makes me really want to check it out.

Inside it is full of tools and features to control your diabetes and live a better life.

You can read and share Diabetic Recipes, join forums to discus experiences with fellow diabetics, read the many pages with pure info, ask your questions and get answers from experts FOR FREE! And there is even a section for ‘Tips for Smart Diabetes Shoppers’. The flow of the site as the UI suggests is friendly and welcoming and I found it easy to navigate (a big problem with social networks today).

dLife was founded in 2004 and if you’d look at their Advisory Board list you’ll find many well known celebs from sports medicine and a lot of TV (and yes they also have their on dLife TV).

I couldn’t really test the quality of the content and tools of the site (as I said I know nothing about it) but from a technical marketing point of view – it’s a very nice site, I’m just not very clear on how the ____ are they going to monetize it, cause the ads they are running now will probably not even pay for the water supply.

Final words

The Good:

1. I love it – it’s a great looking site.
2. Serious people with serious money behind it.
3. Very close to becoming a portal for diabetes – good for them.

The Bad:

1. How are they going to pay the bills?
2. While browsing I got the feeling it was not as crowded as I’d expect it to be.
3. Niche but busy surroundings – SugarStats & TuDiabetes are there too!

Will I go there if I had diabetes? Sure

The people rest their case.