WebMD Health exchange allows people to connect with health experts and other WebMD members to share experiences, discuss personal challenges, and receive answers and support.

"WebMD Health Exchange is a powerful new way to connect our 60 million monthly users to share their own experiences and personal wisdom across any area of health and wellness," said Wayne Gattinella, President and Chief Executive Officer, WebMD.

"We expect Health Exchange will quickly become a trusted source of information for our users and an important new communications platform for our sponsors."

WebMD Health Exchange is being integrated throughout WebMD.com, giving people the ability to connect with others on relevant topics. Along with expert led communities, members can create their own communities and exchange information with other users. Communities can be created for public access which are searchable on WebMD and online, or members can create their own private communities to share information with others.

Doctors from Duke Medicine will provide expertise for communities ranging from asthma to rheumatoid arthritis. Experts from the National Health Council, National Osteoporosis Foundation, American Gastroenterological Association, North American Menopause Society, and the American Veterinary Medical Association will lead related community discussions.

The WebMD Health Exchange will also allow third party sponsors to create branded exchanges and to host consumer discussions on specific health and wellness topics.
 

The report titled "Beyond Trust: Engaging Consumers in the Post-Recession World" was conducted in partnership with The Futures Company and introduces "TrustR," a new metric for understanding the relationship between consumers and brands.

"The ‘TrustR’ metric is very relevant in a global economy that is struggling to emerge from a gloomy recessionary period," said Eileen Campbell, Global CEO of Millward Brown.

"Consumers are less likely to spend hard-earned money on brands that they don’t trust. In fact, we found that the number one ‘TrustR’ brand in each of the 22 countries we researched was nearly seven times more likely to be purchased and consumers were 10 times more likely to have formed a strong bond with these brands."

TrustR is calculated by looking at consumer responses to the questions "how trustworthy is this brand?" and "would you recommend this brand?" the scores are indexed and combined to reach a TrustR score. The average score is 100, and anything over 105 is considered good.

Amazon scored 123, followed closely by FedEx at 122 and Downy, Huggies, Tide, and Tylenol all had scores of 120.

The Top 10 Most Trusted and Recommended Brands in the U.S.

Source: Millward Brown

Note: Study conducted over the course of 2009, prior to Toyota’s recent recall

"When a person recommends a brand they put their own personal trust and credibility on the line. They are only willing to recommend brands which themselves have proven reliable and trustworthy," said Nigel Hollis, EVP and Chief Global Analyst  of Millward Brown.

"Amazon.com, the brand ranked first in the U.S. by TrustR, has achieved that status through exceptional service and providing its own recommendations to users. This combination has made Amazon the gold standard of trust and recommendation in the U.S."
 

WebMD Healthy Pets provides pet owners with health information to help their pets live healthier lives.

The sites helps owners care for their cats and dogs with veterinarian-reviewed information on pet diet and nutrition, behavior and training, and preventive care. WebMD Healthy Pets offers an online newsletter, slideshows, videos and blogs to help pet owners  make informed decisions. The site also focuses on the human health benefits of owning a pet, such as lower blood pressure and less anxiety, along with the impact pets can have on health conditions such as allergies.

WebMD says it launched the site because 75 percent of its 60 million unique monthly visitors are also pet owners.

"WebMD Healthy Pets provides pet owners with reliable health news and information on topics ranging from general wellness to disease–for all stages of a pet’s life," said Nan-Kirsten Forte, Executive Vice President, Consumer Services, WebMD.

"Pet owners who already trust WebMD for health and wellness information for their families now have WebMD’s veterinarian-reviewed pet information to help them care for their pets."

WebMD Healthy Pets includes:

Dog and cat diet and nutrition information based on age, activity level and health conditions.

Dog and cat medical symptom and condition information to help owners care for pets with health conditions.

A veterinarian led online pet community to share pet owner experience and tips with other dog and cat owners.

Veterinarians specializing in cats and dogs answer popular questions on
 topics ranging from care to wellness.

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"Specifically, social media vehicles are expanding and accelerating the pace at which patients and caregivers can gain access to drug treatment ratings.," says Jessica Hogue on the Nielsen Online blog. "Similar to how an online shopper may peruse consumer reviews and ratings for, say, a flat screen TV on WalMart.com, today’s patients can get a similar quick fix."

Still, these sites can’t replace real medical care. They can be useful for obtaining information and opinions, but they’re not necessarily going to make you feel better, and they’re certainly not going to give you treatment.

Nielsen decided to look at traffic for the popular WebMD and compare it to the traffic of some other medical review sites combined. "By literally putting a human face on this vast repository of patient information and fostering social networking, these sites distinguish themselves from predecessors like DrugRatingz.com, and even established sites like WebMD.com, which also allows users to rate treatments," says Hogue. "I was curious to see what traffic to the sites looked like. As yet, traffic is quite low and below our minimum reporting levels, but directionally this data seems to indicate that awareness of review sites is gradually increasing."

 If nothing else, this data indicates that people are beginning to trust social media more as a legitimate source of information. When you can interact with a number of people who share similar experiences to your own, you build a connection and often establish a trusting (at least to some degree) relationship with them. Of course, even if these social sites are looked to more often, that doesn’t mean that people aren’t taking some of the information obtained with a grain of salt. But that’s part of the beauty of it. There will often be people there to discredit bogus information or to disagree with ideas, and sometimes such responses are just as useful as the original idea.

WebMD Health continues to be in the top position of the category with 17.3 million visitors in July, up three percent over a year ago. Three other health networks increased the overall growth of the category, each pulling in more than ten million visitors.

Everyday Health had 14.7 million visitors in July (up 63 percent), Revolution Health Network captured 11.3 million visitors (up 182 percent), and AOL Health grabbed 11.1 million visitors (up 88 percent). Everyday Health and Revolution Health Network were able to achieve growth with recent partnerships with a number of smaller health sites, along with some strategic acquisitions.

"Improved site functionality, increased content personalization, and overall consumer acceptance of the Internet as a source for health information have helped to breathe new life into the health information category," said John Mangano, senior director, comScore Pharmaceutical Marketing Solutions.

"Most sites have become vibrant online communities rooted in sharing experiences and advice, rather than simply being one-way information resources for the consumer. As Google and Microsoft ramp up efforts with their respective health sites, Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault, it will be interesting to see how the category continues to evolve."

In June, more than 1.5 billion display ad views were seen by 53.5 million people on health information sites. WebMD Health led with 290 million display ad views that reached nearly 15 million people at an average frequency of 19.3 times per visitor during the month.

Revolution Health Network and AOL Health ranked second and third, with 201 million display ad views and 186 million display ad views, respectively.

WebMD was expecting to earn between $395 and $415 million in revenue.  It now predicts that the figure will land between $380 and $395 million.  Net income will suffer in the same fashion, dropping from between $36.5 and $46.0 million to the $29.5 to $37.5 million range.

 WebMD Stock Drop

WebMD’s stock, meanwhile, has lost about 13 percent of its value in the last two days.

Fleeing advertisers appear to deserve direct blame for the situation; the company then states that they’re being "driven by increased caution in the current business climate."

But Kim Peterson responds, "I think Goldman Sachs analyst Jennifer Watson is on to something when she said that advertisers might be testing cheaper alternatives, such as new ad networks that target smaller health sites.  If that’s the case, then WebMD’s problems are more serious than the company is projecting.  It’s losing customers to the competition, not to the slowing economy."

That would be good news for everyone not connected to the company, at least.

More recently, medical and legal professionals have taken another leap forward through the use of blogs. No longer is it considered tacky or unethical to promote one’s practice through Internet marketing. Websites like WebMD have become wildly popular, proving that the old ways of thinking are no longer valid.

While most blogs and websites advertising services are perfectly fine, there are most likely some that are not well thought out. An advertisement of services is fine but what if the blogger begins to offer advice, even without directly intending to do so?

There are a million fine points to medicine and, beyond the most basic remedy, it is rare to find a “one size fits all” diagnosis and potential treatment. The same can be said about the law. There are thousands—perhaps even millions—of laws governing everything from pet safety to treason, with each state and municipality putting in its own two cents. A blog that gives any sort of advice regarding either of these professions is simply asking for trouble. Regardless of how well-intentioned the blogger may be, it is inevitable that someone will take information from one of these sites, apply it to his own life, and meet with utter disaster. Then the blogger, his company, and probably the web server will become embroiled in a lawsuit. Naturally, there would be an argument about personal responsibility and the fact that there was a disclaimer on the site discouraging action without receiving professional advice. Yet disclaimers seem to have little impact on lawsuits anymore and most people admit to skipping over them when perusing a site.

In a world of instant gratification, professionals have the right idea in getting the word out about themselves and their services. One can only hope that the information disseminated is well thought out and that their malpractice insurance has been paid.

Comments

Their names alone make the two companies look like a match, and they’ve been thinking things over since November of 2007.  That’s where we run into the first problem, however, with a formal release stating, "HLTH announced today that it has not yet been able to reach agreement . . . on mutually acceptable terms for a merger and that it plans to continue negotiations for a short period of time."

Then, "[a]fter such period, the process is expected to conclude, whether or not an agreement is reached.  There can be no assurance that a transaction will be agreed upon or ultimately consummated."

Hardly sounds promising, does it?  Getty Images is stuck in a similar situation.  And then there’s Yahoo, which is in the middle of Microsoft’s acquisition attempt.

Strangely enough, though, there appears to be a connection between Yahoo’s and WebMD’s fates.  In regards to the latter, Rafat Ali reports, "Part of its lower outlook include its display advertising deal with yahoo, where it has a ‘more conservative outlook…based on the potential acquisition of their business.’"

Still, the resolution WebMD-HLTH relationship is probably of less importance than the other deals mentioned in this article; as things stand, HLTH already owns 84 percent of WebMD.

Those first three entities now qualify as “premium publishers” in Yahoo’s eyes.  And although you probably know what the first two do, we’ll point out that Ziff Davis runs magazines such as eWeek and PC Magazine; Yahoo has really cozied up to an array of markets with this move.

Marketers in each of them are supposed to benefit as a result.  Yet The Register’s Drew Cullen notes, “The deals represent an unusual twist on the way most advertising networks . . . place bottom feeder ads to soak up the excess inventory of third party publishers.  Yahoo! by contrast is offering its own inventory to give page-impression constrained publishers a way of fulfilling bigger campaigns than they could on their own site.”

Cullen goes on to add, “Yahoo! doesn’t say how the gig will work out in practice,” but the new agreements are multi-year in nature, so we’ll have plenty of time to analyze them.  Also, Cars.com, Forbes.com, and Ziff-Davis Media presumably had plenty of confidence in Yahoo’s approach.

WebMD, which reached a multi-year agreement, as well, might feel the same way.  In this deal, both advertising and search are involved – Yahoo will power search functions on all of WebMD’s sites.

Combined with the third quarter results, these developments may help change some minds about the search company.

WebMD Health had the most traffic with an average of 17.1 million unique visitors per month. NIH.gov was second with 9.8 million monthly visitors. MSN Health had 8.1 million visitors and Yahoo Health had 6.7 million monthly visitors on average.

"While the larger and more established health portals are continuing to grow, the category is being shaken up by a few upstarts," said Carolina Petrini of comScore.

"In the past year, both Healthline.com and QualityHealth.com have more than doubled their respective online audiences to nearly three million visitors per month, becoming major players in the category."

Visitors to health related Web sites are also loyal. Only 16.8 percent of MSN Health users visited other health sites. A fifth or less Yahoo Health and Healthline.com users visited other health sites.

The most searched keyword, "pregnancy," was entered over 17 million times in the first quarter of 2007. "Cancer," "flu" and "fitness" each had 15 million searches.