I would like to thank Manny Hernandez President of TuDiabetes for this email interview.
I will publish the article in two parts as it was long and interesting ;-)
TuDiabetes is very different from the rest of the companies listed on our list of Health social networks, It's a nonprofit with a message rather than the rest who are for profit with a goal.
Can you introduce yourself and your site?
I am Manny Hernandez, the President of the Diabetes Hands Foundation, a nonprofit focused on connecting people touched by diabetes (people who have diabetes as well as their friends, family and others who ultimately are affected by it) and raising diabetes awareness.
We run two social networks, TuDiabetes.com (in English) and EsTuDiabetes.com (in Spanish), through which we currently reach out to more than 6,000 people worldwide, growing at a rate of about 10% every month.
How do you describe the Market your company is in?
As a nonprofit, I don't like to think of us as being in a "market". We cater to people WITH diabetes and the people around them, along with those who need to be aware of how critical the current situation is with diabetes.
How large is your team and what are their backgrounds?
Currently, we have a full-time staff of two: myself and a Creative Director, Andreina Davila. We have a board of five persons, a board of advisors made up of 6 professionals, a team of Administrators that helps us run the two social networks and a team of volunteers in the hundreds of people.
What is THE ONE thing you do better than all the rest?
One of the things that makes us unique is our emphasis on community-centric diabetes awareness initiatives.
What is THE ONE thing you wish you could do better?
We need to further our offline presence, so we can reach out to more people who cannot or prefer not to connect online with others touched by diabetes.
Please choose one competitor and say a few good words about them…
We work with many other groups that we share part of our goals with. One of the groups we work with closely is DiabetesTalkFest, our partners in offering chats about diabetes to our members and anybody else who wants to participate: they have weekly chats for people to jump in and learn from each other and periodically invite experts that touch on specific topics of interest.
Where do you see your company in 5-10 years?
That depends on whether there is a cure for diabetes in that timeframe. If it has been found, perhaps we may not be around... but until there is a cure for diabetes, we will continue to reach out to more people touched by diabetes, both online and offline while we also work to help people who do not have diabetes better understand what living with diabetes is like, what are the symptoms of diabetes, etc.
What is the greatest challenge to your success?
Today, it's gotta be resources (isn't it for eveybody?) We face a growing need for funding so we can grow our team to cater to the growing needs from our members and to be able to grow the way we know we need to grow. In the meantime, we are working on developing our volunteer program but we are open and looking for sponsors who may want to partner with us to help us underwrite some of the programs we conduct.
How will the current market crash influence the Health Social Networks?
There will be consolidations. There will also be some networks that may run out of fuel due to the current situation: I hope they are not lost in the midst of it all, and end up being absorbed by others. Ultimately, the most important thing is the patient and any health social network that goes away leaves patients hanging, patients that benefit from the interactions they have with other patients through the network.
Most Health Social Networks rely on Advertising (Everybody is using Adsense). Do you see anything different in the future? Will it be enough?
It not enough, unless you run a network that has hundreds of thousands of members, resulting in very large traffic figures (we currently get a combined 100K Visits and 500K+ Pageviews per month).
Also, AdSense doesn't really give publishers (networks, in our case) much control over the quality of the ads PRIOR to them appearing: you find yourself removing URLs from "miracle drugs" that are fairly insulting to patients. It would be ideal to have a greater degree of control over the quality of the ads, which is one of the areas where I see change coming: either Google offering it or more players entering this space (there are a few already) acknowledging the importance quality has.
That’s it for now… I will publish the second part soon.
If you are involved with a health social network and would like to do an email interview please contact me.
Sam
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