Phone Conversation – an Overview
The night before last, many of us who had previously been part of Wellsphere received almost identical emails from Dr. Rutledge, and from what I’ve been able to gather, each one seemed to contain an invitation to chat on the phone. I replied to the email (as detailed in my previous post) and offered a phone number in exchange, in case he really did want to talk to someone.
My phone rang later in the evening, and a male voice I didn’t recognize asked for me. I wasn’t able to catch the phone on time, but I suspected it might be Dr. Rutledge since that sort of thing is rather unusual here. I sent him another email, asking him to let me know if he had been the caller. He called me back again in just a few minutes.
At that time, we had an extended conversation. I would like to summarize what was said … and in all justice, I need to try to do it without any personal slant or opinion. I’m going to try VERY hard to simply “tell it the way it happened” as well as possible, without adding any of my own impressions, I’ll do that in a later post, since I still do have my own opinion of this entire drama.
One note of caution … I’m certain that I’m going to have to paraphrase, since I don’t have any sort of “eidetic” memory. I do promise, however, to be as faithful to the spirit of what was said as possible.
Dr. Rutledge called me, and said that he thought it would be good if we could chat one on one, because he had taken my comments1 to heart, and he wanted to explain what his (and Wellsphere’s) intentions had been.
He said that he was confused by the “feeding frenzy” which was taking place across the medical blogosphere and in Twitter. He explained that they did not set out to create the site with the intention of selling it, but that their intentions – previously, and currently – have always been to provide a well based, helpful platform. He assured me that he has always done everything from a sense of good will, and that they (all of them at Wellsphere) were united in these benign intentions.
Dr. Rutledge mentioned several times that each invitation which had been sent out to various bloggers had been hand chosen by himself (most often,) or someone else in Wellsphere. He said that they only chose those which were considered to be the best blogs among those researched, because they wanted to provide the best platform for the bloggers, and for the readers.
He went on to explain that they didn’t sell it with the intention of making money from other people’s work2. According to Dr. Rutledge, they’re a small crew, working on a shoestring budget, and the only way to continue was to join with a larger group. He said that he thought that Wellsphere would now be able to offer more than it had in the past.
Regarding the concerns1 I’ve brought up on this blog, and in comments on other blogs, Dr. Rutledge told me that they had labeled all of their bloggers according to their level of knowledge, and placed them in the appropriate groups regarding their area of concern. He requested that I find an example of what caused my concern, and that I should forward it to him. He expressed no knowledge of any mavens giving anyone irresponsible answers, or answers which were above their own level of competence.
Dr. Rutledge reminded me that they have honored all requests to remove user content and information, although according to the EULA’s fine print, they were not required to do so.
A fellow blogger expressed concern that the IP material they have removed would not really be gone, and could later be used without their consent. I asked Dr. Rutledge about the IP material, and was told that all of the material had been removed from their server, and no longer existed there. He also added that whatever someone else, without his knowledge or consent, did at a later time, was out of his control.
Finally, he explained that he felt personally hurt by the charges of having been disingenuous, of having misrepresented himself and Wellsphere, and that people would actually believe the things that they were writing.
This is only a brief overview of the conversation, which lasted for a fairly long time. Dr. Rutledge repeated many of the above points in various ways, but the above summary is as faithful I am able to make it, keeping in mind that I’m only able to relay the points that I remember. I have invited him to correct anything which he feels does not properly represent his words.
1) Regarding Wellsphere’s “mavens” being encouraged to answer medical questions
2) I’ve been thinking about my phone conversation with Dr. Rutledge, and I’d like to amend something I said, because I’m beginning to think that I might have stuck my own impression in there after all, and I don’t want to do that. I’m pretty sure that he actually didn’t tell me any details of the sale, since I do remember him telling me that he wasn’t at liberty to discuss it. I’m concerned that what I wrote might be more of a conclusion I’d come to on my own … and might not represent the truth after all. Please bear with me as I amend something that I think I might have misrepresented.
My original statement read: “weren’t making money from the sale of Wellsphere.” I don’t know that to be factual, so I’m retracting it.
I would like to repeat my invitation to Dr. Rutledge: he should correct me if I’ve misrepresented any of his statements. It would be far more helpful than relying on my old, cranky moof-memory. Apologies to all. I guess I’m not quite ready for the big time with my reporting skills, eh? ;o)
Wellsphere:
- Just Another Blog Scraper …
- My eMail To Wellsphere and HealthCentral
- An Offer to Chat … and a Reply
- Phone Conversation – an Overview
- To Tie Things Up
February 1st, 2009 at 2:58 am
i requested him to remove me. although he did remove my feed, the content that was already there was not removed. it is still there. so there is an element of untruth in what he says above.
February 1st, 2009 at 3:58 am
It’s hard to take his comments sincerely since it seems everything else that has emerged from them has been mass-produced and spin-doctored. He was exceptionally quick to call you and then call once more in response to your email asking if that had been him, yet, in your case, he was consistently unresponsive to you when you repeatedly asked about your content being under the parenting group and your other concerns before the big Health Central buy-out scandal. I’ve heard multiple accounts of people having responded to their initial flattering emails with requests for specifics about the agreement Wellsphere was proposing, and all of those people were eventually met with silence when they started asking the hard questions – the questions far too many of us now wish we’d thought to ask. Wouldn’t a responsible company offer the terms of service up front, not leave it up to the blogger to think of it on their own and seek it out? Wouldn’t a responsible company send prompt and appropriate responses to people inquiring about the specifics of being a hosted blogger? Wednesday night when all this started, no one was able to get anything out of them until they started altering their profiles in ways that WS didn’t like. I’ve yet to receive a response to the emails I sent late Thursday night telling them I need written verification my content won’t be used in a way that violates my copyright. That leads me to believe they’ll only respond when it’s convenient for them, when they have their ducks all in a row with pat responses in hand.
He’s just deflecting away from the real issue by abdicating personal responsibility when he says, “whatever someone else, without his knowledge or consent, did at a later time, was out of his control.” Has anyone even expressed concern about what Dr. Rutledge might do with the material? Since when is what he may or may not do with the material an issue since he wasn’t the one claiming ownership in the first place? People are concerned about what Wellsphere or Health Central, in their present states or future incarnations might do with the material since they claimed unlimited ownership from now until the end of time. He’s complicit in the system that has condoned questionable business practices, that continues to act irresponsibly by not owning up to having managed this so poorly, and that hasn’t taken steps to ameliorate it in the form of verification to all of us that our work will not be used without our explicit consent.
On top of all that, he seems to be suggesting that Wellsphere has done all of us a favor by removing our content, like we should be thankful and appreciate how generous and honorable they are for having made that sacrifice even though they didn’t really have to? Are you kidding me? Where is the remorse for having knowingly mislead so many people? Where is the admission of obvious wrongdoing and unethical business practices? Instead, he’s fishing for sympathy by telling people he’s “hurt by charges of having been disingenuous, of having misrepresented himself and Wellsphere, and that people would actually believe the things that they were writing.” It’s another deflection tactic that under the circumstances is really unprofessional and as manipulative as any of the emails he sent.
February 1st, 2009 at 6:12 am
Google MIGHT penalize Wellsphere for re-using blogs via the shady TOS. I propose that we petition Google to request that Wellsphere be penalized in search engine results to upset their SEO strategy. You can report Wellsphere here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport
February 1st, 2009 at 10:52 am
Very interesting, Moof. Another twist.
February 1st, 2009 at 12:38 pm
moof, thank you for blogging this. He seems to be troubled by how this will affect his reputation. If you appear to represent an organization, it is your responsibility to be sure that the org’s practices and ethics are in line with yours. And lobby them to change or vote with your feet. It appears that he didn’t.
February 1st, 2009 at 1:30 pm
It is difficult to believe that the plan was “never to sell” when the TOS has provisions in it in case of sale. I think the plan was to monetize the site with advertisements and make as much of a profit as possible for as long as possible (flattering bloggers all the way to keep “them happy” while not sharing revenue). However, when they discovered that most advertisers do NOT want to sponsor ads next to community-generated content, they realized their Plan A business model couldn’t work. Plan B was to sell, and that’s what they did.
I tend to believe Rutledge when he says they didn’t make a LOT of money on the sale – if they had sold even a year ago someone might have paid millions for it- (funds probably went to cover their debts and parachute them to personal financial safety as employees of HCN) but now that the blogosphere is hip to what they did, their employee status at HCN is more of a liability than anything else. HCN’s acquisition (as per Schroeder) was primarily for repeat traffic that they could monetize with ads.
There are three kinds of bloggers who will remain in this community now that the cat’s out of the bag: 1) those who are selling something 2) those whose content quality doesn’t stand on its own – and they therefore have no other way to gain visibility/traffic and 3) those who live in a bubble and haven’t heard the news or understand the WS business model.
I agree with Moofie that part of the underbelly of this whole thing is that lay people were promoted as “health experts” on Wellsphere and encouraged to answer medical questions. That’s both misleading and dangerous – and as a physician I worry about patient safety online more than ever. One should question the value of Wellsphere content on two bases: 1) most of the best, most credible bloggers have already requested that all their content be removed 2) a collection of lay person responses to medical questions has little value.
If HCN wants to protect its reputation as a trusted source of health information, then (in my opinion) they have one of two choices at this point: 1) medically review all WS content and selectively remove harmful and misleading claims/threads/blogs/experts – this will cost them about $25/page of content – an expense that is likely to be financially untenable. Or 2) retract the deal with Wellsphere, apologize profusely to bloggers, and invite them to join their network of their own free will for either ad revenue share (as Seed Magazine does) or guaranteed traffic – no transfer of IP rights to them, bloggers can quit at any time if they don’t see a benefit. They might consider offering eDocAmerica type services for answering patient questions online, if they are interested in continuing that Q&A strategy.
I hope that the HCN will provide the health blogosphere with a formal perspective/statement soon. In this case, silence is certainly not golden.
February 1st, 2009 at 3:17 pm
Dr. Val, thank you for your comment … and especially for the part about the sale of Wellsphere … it helped me to realize that I might have misrepresented what I was actually told. I think I made a mental leap to my first conclusion. My bad.
February 1st, 2009 at 6:51 pm
This isn’t the first time that Wellsphere has had a problem with its online reputation, which makes the apology sound a bit disingenuous. I agree with Dr. Val that HCN should consider a statement to bloggers very soon.