An Open Letter...
January 26, 2009
Dear Wellsphere Community Members, Health Mavens, and Health Bloggers,
Earlier today HealthCentral, a leading publisher of over 35 websites for individuals facing specific health challenges, announced that it has acquired Wellsphere.
This is an incredibly exciting moment for every contributor to HealthCentral’s and Wellsphere’s communities, and for the 10 million health consumers who, each month, seek and find powerful information and invaluable support from each of you. Our communities offer unparalleled insight, practical advice, and inspiration for people who want to live better and fuller lives.
Read the entire letter.
Read the Press Release: HealthCentral acquires Wellsphere.
Most important are the questions bloggers and experts may have regarding the acquisition:
Questions about HealthCentral and the Wellsphere Acquisition
- What is HealthCentral’s mission?
- Who leads HealthCentral’s experiences?
- Who is HealthCentral’s leadership team?
- How does HealthCentral make money?
- Who provides content to HealthCentral sites, and how are they paid?
- HealthCentral recently bought a company called Wellsphere. Why?
- How does the Wellsphere “Health Bloggers Network” work?
- How do people join the “Health Bloggers Network”?
- Will the “Health Bloggers Network” change under HealthCentral?
- Does HealthCentral or Wellsphere have the right to republish health bloggers’ content forever?
- Will HealthCentral redistribute blogger content brought into Wellsphere to other sites across the web?
- Does HealthCentral own the right to content posted by visitors to Wellsphere.com or HealthCentral sites forever?
- Will people who join the Wellsphere Health Bloggers Network get paid for content fed into Wellsphere.com?
- Will Wellsphere share banner advertising revenue on Wellsphere.com with bloggers who join the Wellsphere Health Bloggers Network?
- Will HealthCentral own the content that it pays bloggers to produce?
- Who do I contact if I have more questions about HealthCentral?
- Who do I contact to join the Wellsphere Health Bloggers Network?
I was approached by Wellsphere with an E-mail telling me to came and get my award, that they thought my blog was "one of the best." That smelled like Phishing to me, so after visiting an empty website they linked to, I deleted it - then I started noticing the award popping up all over the place.
ReplyDeleteI am the first to admit that MS has me cognitively compromised, so I didn't want to be part of something I didn't fully understand. Thanks for looking into this, Lisa.
Hi Lisa--
ReplyDeleteI mentioned to you my strange experience (privately) with Wellsphere. I had wanted to do semi-feeds to keep my content on my site and let people come and visit me if they wanted to--- I think this is termed "not giving away the farm?" I didn't become a "Top Blogger" or whatever they term it, but I changed my mind after the acquisition notice---thanks for the heads-up---and told them to remove my partial feeds, which they did. It was as if I had never been there: no account and no trace of me. Strange, but it shows that you can be removed from this site if you so choose. Just in case anyone wants to be removed.
Another strange thing: "Dr. Rutledge" emailed me and wanted to speak to me over the phone about WHY I didn't want to be a part of Wellsphere. I didn't take him up on this.....Is he even a real person I wonder?!...
Anyway, thanks Lisa for investigating this. You really ought to be employed at Snopes.com.
Fondly,
Jen
Lisa,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the heads up on this. I have just recently been getting emails from them and I'm a little confused. I think I will pass on this "opportunity".