DailyStrength.org has a ton of momentum and one of the best management teams in Health 2.0. Here's the interview with their Grant Wedner, VP Partnerships & Corporate Development:
ANSWER: DailyStrength's core offering is 600+ community support groups that provide an anonymous, comfortable place where people can meet around a shared issue or condition. Although the largest communities are health-related, many thriving communities are more lifestyle oriented, focused on single parenting, financial challenges, and military families, just to name a few. We think of DailyStrength -- and most importantly, our members think of us -- more broadly than a "community health site". In many respects, DailyStrength is more of a life challenge site, of which health is a key part. The site offers core features related directly to health, such as a treatments section where members report on how different drugs and therapies have worked for them. At the same time, we also offer features and tools that members use for "life challenge" purposes. The recently added Goals feature is a great example. It provides tools for a member to track and share her progress toward any goal she sets for herself and is fully integrated into the core of our product allowing for encouragement from others. The majority of the members' goals are squarely health-focused, centering around weight loss, smoking cessation, pregnancy, sobriety, etc. But interestingly enough, a significant number of these goals have to do with things like "being a better person", "treating my kids better", “saving money”, and other lifestyle goals. Aside from the "lifestyle vs. health" differentiator, another factor is the passion and dedication the members have for the site. Each user averages almost 50 pageviews per visit, and spends about 9 minutes on the site per visit (ComScore December 2007). These numbers vastly underestimate our internal logs but still far exceed almost every other community health site. So in the end, it’s all about our audience. Our members tell us they haven't found an online environment like this anywhere else. They also tell us that they don't know what they would do if they couldn't interact with their friends on the site each day. In fact, one recent poll of 1,000 members found that 55% of them visit the site multiple times per day, and 71% say that DailyStrength is their main source of emotional support for their life challenge or illness.
2. You recently launched DS Goals, what other products do you have planned in 2008?
ANSWER: We feel DS Goals is a natural extension of our social networking platform. In the past, users would come to DailyStrength to join our support groups and talk about an issue or learn about a treatment. Taking action felt like a natural extension and a perfect fit for our existing platform. We consider DS Goals our first step towards consumer friendly behavior modification programs. And, in the future, we anticipate that other companies will host their programs on the DS site (think of third-party widgets on Facebook). For 2008, we are focused on improving the design and performance of the site. As well, we’ll be adding a few new features that we feel are in line with our existing platform. One of the first new products is DS Groups – slated to launch in late February and aimed at helping .orgs, .govs, and other companies offer community, services and support to their existing constituency while also tapping into the growing DS user base. The Groups product is also a platform to allow members to stay connected with family and friends in a secure, private and supportive environment. Now, consumers as well as organizations will be able to have their own social network on the DailyStrength site. Best of all, Groups is free and in most scenarios advertising is controlled by the partner organization for fundraising, awareness or advocacy. It’s important to note that the DailyStrength team is the same core that launched Yahoo! Groups and we really wanted to dramatically improve the features and functionality of existing group products. We think the end result is best in breed – both in eHealth and the online industry in general.
3. What do you see happening right now in PHR, and what might be your play there if any? And what do you see happening right now in EMR, and what might be your play there if any?
ANSWER: We agree that this is a very interesting time in the PHR space with HealthVault recently launching and Google Health to go live any day. We’re very excited about the prospect for PHRs and think the market is finally poised for significant consumer adoption. At present, the major portals see adoption patterns driven by search but we believe it will play out much differently. As we noted above, the typical DailyStrength user logs in multiple times per day and belongs to more than three communities. As well, over time they share a tremendous amount of health information, either through joining communities, listing therapies or entering goals. We see ourselves as a perfect compliment to the new PHR products. Simply put, DailyStrength can help PHR vendors drive the frequency they need to make certain consumer information is updated, accurate and relevant. We’re betting on community as a key consumer driver to PHR adoption. We see the same type of layering partnership with EMRs. Again, DailyStrength can be used as the entry point that provides community support, information, and behavior modification tools while also providing the frequency which makes the EMR product relevant on a daily basis.
4. Tell us about your Badges, and the thinking behind them?
ANSWER: Badges are DailyStrength images that members can place within their email, on a Web page, message board or blog, or anywhere online that others can see and then check out. Some badges are for branding, such as the "DailyStrength: Supporting People" badge, others signify membership in a specific community, Goal status, and others signify an advisor or DS staff member. More badges are in the works that may signify member status, such as your degree of supportiveness or helpfulness to others, or your amount of activity or length of membership, etc. You can see all the badges here.
5. This announcement caught our attention-- tell us more?
ANSWER: We're very pleased to have announced a partnership with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), which in general terms stipulates that we will work together on innovative, mutually beneficial programs for both organizations' sites. That means DailyStrength will have access to CDC's unprecedented health/science data and tools, and CDC will be able to take advantage of DailyStrength's powerful community platform. This is the first time CDC has entered into such a partnership with a social networking site, of which we're very proud. Look for new features on both sites by the end of this quarter and plan to catch your attention with a few more high-profile announcements in the coming months.
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