Grandma, What Big Teeth You Have

While I've been slogging away in Rural County, making my living by delivering babies and rounding on sick hospital patients, Wellsphere, one of the many direct-to-consumer health information websites, has been quietly building up their business by inviting health care bloggers to post their feeds on their site.  In exchange, bloggers received a nifty logo for their sidebar and precious little else.

Today the news broke of the sale of Wellsphere to HealthCentral, another health information site specializing in the repackaging of medical updates and opinions to laypeople.  The purchase price has yet to be disclosed, but TechCrunch reports HealthCentral has recently acquired $50 million in venture capital funds to play with, so I have a hunch the price exceeds the amount I have in my retirement fund by several factors of ten.

Medical bloggers have been tweeting about the takeover and questioning Wellsphere's practices in approaching health care bloggers for content on their website.  Here are some of the posts on the subject:

• The Wall Street Journal's healthcare blog's announcement of the deal.
• Dr. Val's excellent summary of the issues, including text of the mass emailing Wellsphere used to woo bloggers.
• Symtym's dissection of Wellsphere's Terms of Service, which contains language implying Wellsphere's rights of use over a blogger's work, unless the blogger is clever enough to limit the scope of their usage explicitly.

A long time ago, I received the standard pitch to join Wellsphere from their CEO, Geoff Rutledge, M.D.  I browsed their site and saw little there in common with my own blog, so I politely declined.  Dr. Rutledge sent me several other emails over the next few weeks, which I equally politely ignored.  I didn't like the pitch, and I didn't like the hard sell.

A few months later, I began to hear of other medical bloggers having agreed to let Wellsphere use their blog content who were troubled by the direct, word-for-word republishing of their posts on the site.  In essence, Wellsphere republished each blog's feed under their own banner, without any meaningful commentary, discussion on the blogger's work, or any promotional consideration to the blogger, other than the previously-mentioned sidebar badge and a simple link at the top of the feed.  Bloggers who wished to opt out of Wellsphere emailed the webmaster and were met with silence, and only those who persisted with increasingly firm emails and phone calls successfully had their content deleted from the site.

Some health care bloggers, eager to build their readership, have defended Wellsphere as having contributed to the growth of their blogs, but many others suspected they may have lost traffic to their blogs because the entirety of their content was available at Wellsphere, and readers who are not RSS-savvy might never click back to the original blog if they relied upon Wellsphere for health information.

Among the selling points in Wellsphere's business model is the 4 million hits the site receives every month, and the 300,000 health-related articles contained on the site (source:  TechCrunch).  It is worth emphasizing the fact that many of those 300,000 articles, if not the majority, are in fact republished blog posts written by my fellow medical bloggers.  One wonders how much of the Wellsphere/HealthCentral windfall will trickle down to the talented writers who gave Wellsphere permission--out of innocent goodwill, flattered misguidance, or stark ambition--to use their content.

You know the answer to that question:  Zero.  Not one thin dime.  Nada.  Zip.

Now, this is OK because most of the medical bloggers I know aren't in this for the money.  I resumed blogging last year because I missed the dialogue, but I was aware some people make a living writing blogs. I amused myself by thinking people would send me five-dollar bills after I posted a particularly good piece, perhaps with a sticky note attached, saying "Attagirl, keep up the good work."  But I never hung my hat on the possibility, knowing I'd have to make my blog "commercial" in order to stand a chance at monetizing its content.  

You might have guessed by now, if you read this blog regularly and have an understanding of those elements of my character I choose to reveal here, that I'm not a commercial type of gal.  I'm not good at Playing the Game, I'm a terrible blurter and a tell-it-like-it-is sister.  So I settled for getting my kicks out of writing posts and sharing dialogue with the wacky group of people who like to read them.  

If, in a particularly "Gee you like me, you really, really like me!" moment I had succumbed to Wellsphere's pitch, I might have given them permission to use my content, but I doubt that my readership would have increased very much in quantity, and scarcely at all in quality.  Perhaps that wouldn't have mattered, yet relinquishing ownership of my writing to Wellsphere might have resulted in more sinister outcomes. What if they decided to compile and publish a book for sale on their site, entitled 1001 Health Tips From Real Doctors, and proceeded to include one of my posts verbatim, along with posts by a proponent of chelation therapy for operable coronary artery disease and an anti-vaccination followers of Jenny McCarthy?  Their Terms of Service (see Symtym's post) would give them the right to use my post in their book, and I would have no control over the implications of association with other content I strongly oppose.

We're all grown-ups, we should read a site's Terms of Service carefully before allowing them to use our blog content, but I have to question Wellsphere's tactics of implying benefit to bloggers and readers when, in fact, they were merely obtaining free content written by professionals.  Furthermore, their feel-good website design and philosophy--which sells the idea of Wellsphere as an online community--is belied by the obvious profit motive exposed by the HealthCentral deal.

I receive requests to use my content on other websites all the time, and have refused all of them except one, which now I wish I had refused as well.  From now on, my policy will be to decline all such solicitations. Organizations such as Wellsphere are one reason, and another is the state of publishing in general.  The New York Times has reported acquisition freezes in the print publishing industry, which means some of the biggest publishing houses have announced they will not contract for new manuscripts until further notice.  This means it is effectively more difficult for a writer to get published or make a name for herself, and I'm very afraid the writing is on the wall for the traditional practice of publishing.  I'm even more afraid that so-called online communities such as Wellsphere will further dilute the opportunities for good writers to make a name by their writing. 

Writers, beware, and Readers--be equally cautious about the sources of your health information.  The websites you consult may look and sound plausible, but their policies may be reminiscent of the sweatshops and child labor practices we all wish could be eradicated forever.

Comments

[rlbates]

I love your "tell-it-like-it-is-sister" style! Well written post.

[Dr. Val]

Terrific summary of the issues. Thanks for telling it like it is, sister! Keep on keepin' on! :)

[S]

I also got the emails and saw one of the worst terms of service ever - that they take all rights to use and copyright and any reproduction rights and you get - zip. I declined. But I saw it on a lot of blogs I like. Now I'm really glad I didn't.

[pat]

Gosh, I had no idea! I continue to be surprised by the big business facets lurking everywhere you turn! Pretty soon we'll be hearing about the blogosphere bubble.

Anyway, I love your blog, I have old friends in rural and a bit of ancient history with H**** University (and that's not the one in Cambridge Mass :-) Although I'm in medicine too, it's the personal stories that draw me here and would not be well served with mass reproduction. I am following Noo's story closely and with concern and hopefulness.

[dragonfly]

Wow I'm so glad I gave all their emails (and spam comments on my blog) a darn good ignoring.