WellSphere fans might not want to continue reading this review, but the way I see it the chances of an unpaid fan showing up are pretty slim.
WellSphere is the classic 1998 story only it's happening a century later. An Israeli entrepreneur living in America convincing an Israeli VC who is about to give birth and knows very little about internet (she's no longer a VC…) that he is going to take over the wellness world with his ground breaking – world changing – patent pending – air blowing – bla bla idea. She buys it and gives a first time entrepreneur with no experience at anything an unprecedented $4.5M seed. WOOOOW. The only one to top that was the VP of Facebook and top Yahoo executive Doug Hirsch of DailyStrength. The funder of Promotions.com (Steven Krein) and His CMO (Unity Stoakes) managed to raise only half of that for OrganizedWisdom. WOOOOW.
To make sure they don't break the chain WellSphere executives play the game when they start off as an enterprise solution, move to being an internet wellness solution then offer a white label solution to institutions (and manage only a beta with their own school) later to become an all around health network and now it look like they want to be a search engine, all this time not missing a single chance to change their UI and theme, one beautiful UI after the other getting trashed and a graphic designer getting rich. A big party with all the major bloggers and a CEO getting drunk on a PR video (I already said Wellness, right??), a lot of angry ex-employees spitting their guts out. And again. And doing major PR screaming: Hey Hey LOOK AT US - We're Just like Facebook. Ammmm – you're not.
What can you get on WellSphere?
The homepage looks great. A nice clean white page with a trendy large search box in the middle. The bottom looks a bit too spammy to me but… wait wait a minute… a white page, big search box and an apple… did they hire the previous OrganizedWisdom designer?
To the test:
Search for bipolar. Landed on a very crowded page full of results in many categories. Articles, wellpedia, video, members, pictures, news, resources, ask an expert. Lots & lots of links to many different areas. Unorganized & threatening as hell. If I'm bipolar this is when I hit my homepage bookmark. But I'm not so I did follow some of those links and the content was actually very good. No community whatsoever but Interesting articles & a lot of info great as a source of information. Too bad the SEO expert took over because the page is just an unbearable user experience.
I couldn't take it anymore and decided to skip the next text.
Final Words
The Good:
1. Raised a lot of money.
2. Most chances they still have some left.
3. Great graphic designer.
The Bad:
1. No real value or meaning.
2. SEO expert took over the inside pages.
3. Check out the awfully annoying JavaScript page for communities.
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:
- I love it – it’s a great looking site.
- Serious people with serious money behind it.
- Very close to becoming a portal for diabetes – good for them.
The Bad:
- How are they going to pay the bills?
- While browsing I got the feeling it was not as crowded as I’d expect it to be.
- Niche but busy surroundings – SugarStats & TuDiabetes are there too!
Will I go there if I had diabetes? Sure
The people rest their case.
OrganizedWisdom is indeed an organization bursting with wisdom.
Health Social Networks started appearing in 2006 when 3-4 sites pioneered the vertical with a lot of PR. OrganizedWisdom was one of them. Despite the fact that they launched with the wisdom cards already at the front it was really hard to understand what OW was all about, especially because it was mostly a social network and how does a wisdom card relate to social??
Only a year later that I fully understood OrganizedWisdom, it happened when they rebranded the site to social search – now wisdom cards make sense.
Did they plan on doing it this way? I don’t really think so. I believe it was a real time change adapting to the market that became a bit too busy. I love companies that know how to do that.
Today OrganizedWisdom is both the leading search engine in the health vertical and also a great company run by veteran entrepreneurs (I hope to have an email interview with them soon) relaying on the very popular work-from-home concept. People write wisdom card from home (social), Drs verify the cards from home. They maintain a forum to support the work on the wisdom cards (as apposed to the other sites on our list that do it for the patients) and manage to grow so nicely without the overheads of a large office and crew. Managing this sort of operation and doing it so nicely is something to be proud of.
And the real life tests:
I started off by searching for bipolar disorder as this is something I know about.
Auto-complete saved me from typing the whole thing (it was the first option after typing bipo) – I know its nothing special but I love that ;-).
I got the Bipolar Wisdom Card which is managed by Chris Miller. Don’t know who Chris is but she knows a lot about a lot of things (more than 100 wisdom cards on different topics and areas).
The page starts off with a short description about the disorder followed by a few facts. I even learned that some people may be categorized as having bipolar NOS - Not Otherwise Specified, I wouldn’t leave the doctors office if he told me that). I did some checking to find out it was taken from wikipedia, too bad there was no mentioning or credit for it on the page.
The page continues with news, more resources, symptoms, causes, treatments and more.
All in all the card is full of knowledge and resources and would be a great place to start if I were writing a school paper, it lacks some personal touch that a bipolar patient would definitely be looking for.
Second test, Complete Blood Count. Lets say I just got the test results and wanted to know what my status is:
This time the card was BINGO!
Short description was accurate.
The card contained all the links a person needs to find out everything about his blood count.
It would have been nice to have the different measures on page but having all the resources listed is good enough.
Final words
The Good:
- Great company with a great website
- Unique and powerful solution.
- Your source for health related resources.
The Bad:
- Missing some personal touch.
- paying for content is not really social networking
- wikipedia
and to the question in the title: NO
I don’t think OW will change the world, but its here to stay and I love them for it!
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