Revolution Health Takes on WebMD with User-Centric Focus
This week, Revolution Health completed the acquisition of two burgeoning health websites. Revolution added HealthTalk, a site focused on patients with chronic conditions, and invested in SparkPeople, which offers diet and exercise plans as well as social networking functionality. Revolution sites include carepages.com and drugstore.com – the combined Network attracts more than 12 million unique visitors a month.
Steve Case, founder of Revolution, believes the consumer will be a key driver in the $2 trillion healthcare market; said Case, “[the] segment is ripe for disruption.”
Case seems to have a pulse on the industry with a focus on user interaction; WebMD employs a more traditional publishing model.
Revolution spokesman Brad Burns said based on October data compiled by comScore, Revolution Health had 105 million page views, while SparkPeople had 84 million and HealthTalk had 8 million. Revolution’s sites experienced substantial growth over the past year, far surpassing WebMD’s 20% increase in unique visitors.
SparkPeople’s community and social networking elements seem to gaining market share as well. In addition to its traditional forums, the company offers ‘SparkPages’ – customizable weight loss blogs akin to MySpace.
Says one user, “This might just be a good thing here, blogging on my lunch hour, instead of eating
No, just kidding, I’ve already had my lunch consisting of a baked potato and garden salad. So now my taste buds are screaming for something sweet, so I’m blogging to try and shut them up.”
According to Compete.com, the number of unique visitors toSparkPeople grew 142% YOY. Notably, SparkPeople keeps its users online for 37% longer than WebMD, with the average user viewing 40.2 pages versus WebMD’s 15.4.
Capturing and engaging a participatory audience of health-centric individuals could have huge payoff down the line. Competing technologies are becoming harder to differentiate; if the recent Facebook imbroglio tells us anything, it’s that fostering a loyal user base is a key ingredient for success.
5 Responses to “Revolution Health Takes on WebMD with User-Centric Focus”
1 » Health search and information remains big business » business|bytes|genes|molecules 6 December 2007 @ 4:37 pm
[…] Revolution Health acquired HealthTalk and SparkPeople as per an article that I first saw on OneMedPlace. Some interesting titbits and observations from that […]
2 Bernard Farrell 7 December 2007 @ 7:27 am
This sounds like good news for people with chronic conditions. The infusion of capital and expertise from RevolutionHealth should be good all round.
I am curious about the choice of diseases that are currently covered by HealthTalk. At present they don’t have diabetes as one of the conditions. That’s surprising given the prevalence of diabetes. Maybe it’s because places like TuDiabetes.com have that disease already well-covered?
3 Douglas Cress 7 December 2007 @ 11:33 am
Hi Bernard,
I’m not really sure. Perhaps Revolution believes in might impinge on some of the other sites in its Network - those more focused on diet and exercise.
That seems unlikely however. Web companies in other vertical are all too quick to put up even the thinnest of affiliate sites in an attempt to gain market share.
4 OneMedPlace » Blog Archive » The Future of Online Health: Interview with Aaron Wall 24 March 2008 @ 7:39 am
[…] To what do you attribute the rapid ascent the Revolution Health network? […]
5 » WebMD Faces New Competition from Waterfront Media, Revolution Health Merger | OneMedPlace » Archive 7 October 2008 @ 9:30 am
[…] Previously: Revolution Health Takes on WebMD with User-Centric Focus […]
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