I'm delighted to share with you some exciting news from Wellsphere. Here are the details from our CEO, Ron Gutman:
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Dear members, writers, and users,
It is my pleasure to share with you some very exciting news: Wellsphere has merged with HealthCentral to create the world’s premiere online health technology company, the second largest organic online health enterprise, and the number one network of online health communities!
Wellsphere’s mission has always been to help millions of people live healthier, happier lives by connecting them with the knowledge, people and tools they need to manage and improve their health. Now, together with HealthCentral, we can help tens of millions of people every month!
HealthCentral shares our goal of delivering accurate, condition-specific information to consumers where and when they want it. The comprehensiveness of quality information is what makes the HealthCentral-Wellsphere combination so unique. Combining HealthCentral’s breadth of content and resources with Wellsphere’s technical expertise and the world largest network of leading health writers will enable us to build on our current success on a much broader scale.
Over the past year, Wellsphere has experienced tremendous growth, having grown from less than 100,000 monthly visitors to a current run rate of more than 4 million monthly visitors (yesterday we served more than 160,000 visitors to our site in one day!). At the same time, our Health Bloggers Network has become the world’s number one community of health writers with more than 1800 active contributors serving our users daily. From the early days at Stanford when I put together a multidisciplinary group of students and professors to research ways to help people lead healthier lives, to recently becoming the fastest-growing top consumer health website, we have always focused on listening to our users, improving our products and services to meet their needs, and expanding our reach and impact. Locking arms with HealthCentral will enable us to serve many more people around the world, and provide us with the substantial resources required to sustain our rapid growth. HealthCentral has a strong sales organization and is backed by some of the world’s premier investors (Sequoia Capital, Carlyle Group, Barry Diller’s Interactive Corp., Allen and Co., and Polaris.)
If you are one of the amazing health writers in our network, you may be excited to know that we will continue to empower you and deliver your extensive knowledge, support and inspiration to an even larger audience than before to ensure you receive the recognition you deserve. If you are a Wellsphere member, we will continue to improve your experience as we are now hiring more great people to help us create an even higher quality, quicker, easier to navigate experience on our site, and build new features and functionality to better serve your health knowledge and support needs.
In the words of Winston Churchill: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." Here at Wellsphere, we feel that we have successfully completed the first chapter of our book, bringing Wellsphere from a research project to a thriving company that successfully serves millions of people in this country and around the world. We are looking forward to the next chapter in which, together with our new partners we will build the best and most innovative online health company, and work to make a positive impact on the lives of millions of people, starting with YOU!
Ron Gutman,
Founder and CEO