This is neither a stunning nor original business model in the Web 2.0 world. In fact, it’s pretty par for the course. Web 2.0 (and Health 2.0) are predicated on a simple premise — you provide the content, and we (the company) will find a way to monetize it. Whether you’re PatientsLikeMe, DailyStrength, or Facebook, the model is the same. In fact, Dr. Val Jones, who ranted about the practice in her blog entry linked above, is familiar with this model first-hand when she worked as the Senior Medical Director for Revolution Health. Revolution Health’s mantra was “Health 2.0″ — an informational website with a healthy dollop of encouraging users to put all of their health information on the site, contribute posts to the site, etc. and expect nothing back in return (except whatever “good feelings” one has for sharing all of that information with the world).

So I had a difficult time understanding the upset in the blogosphere around this business model, which is at the very core of the Health 2.0 movement.

Until I read Dr. Val Jones’ comment in this thread which crystallized the real problem for me.

The problem isn’t that bloggers didn’t read the terms of service before they signed on (which is often a problem when dealing with hundreds of non-laywers, but is also not the company’s fault). It’s not even that Wellsphere found a way not to shut down before running out of money, allowing itself to be acquired by HealthCentral (itself, a website full of syndicated content and content produced by writers and editors who make very little).

It’s the manner in which Wellsphere marketed its offer to have copies of bloggers’ posts appear on its site. Bloggers were wooed to accept the Wellsphere offer through a set of seemingly personal emails from the head doctor over at Wellsphere, Geoffrey W. Rutledge MD, PhD.

The emails, it turns out, were full of flattering comments about the author’s blog. However, they were fake — form letters sent to every one of hundreds of health bloggers. All with the same flattery and appreciation for the author’s writing. All of which was pure marketing schmaltz on Wellsphere’s part.

Brilliant marketing, in its own way, had they not counted on the inevitable — bloggers comparing notes on how they came to blog for Wellsphere. Which is inevitable in this connected world, something apparently the oblivious management at Wellsphere hadn’t counted on.

Everyone wants to feel special. Everyone wants to feel as though someone else has taken notice of their efforts and not only acknowledges that to them, but gives them an “award” and title for their work. I mean, that’s a pretty amazing feeling. If you’ve ever been the recipient of a reward in real-life for some accomplishment, you know how that feels. To leverage that feeling (or to put it more bluntly, to manipulate that feeling) suggests people who had little concern for the value of the people they conducted business with. And as you know, a business is only worth the value of how it conducts its business. If they do so with shallow lack of regard for ethics and integrity in one set of relationships, it’s likely a reflective across a wide range of relationships they have with their employees, business partners, etc.

Wellsphere was, at the end of the day, psychologically-savvy marketers who knew how to appeal to bloggers’ universal need — to be read and appreciated for the blogger’s writing. Is this wrong? Yes, of course it is, if you have any integrity or concern for the people you’re trying to woo to contribute to your site.

Had anyone with a smidgen of ethics considered what they were doing, they would’ve put a halt to it long ago. Now its in HealthCentral’s hands, and I wish them all the luck because whatever goodwill Wellsphere might’ve had at one time, it’s just been burned.

Disclosures: I also worked at Revolution Health for a time, have worked with HealthCentral in the past, and although I joined Wellsphere’s network for a short time, I wasn’t active in it.

Back in 1999, I left the mental health site I founded — the largest site of its kind at the time — to join drkoop.com to help them build a mental health center. Within 6 months I left, frustrated by the lack of interest in actually publishing independent, world-class health information and the focus on pushing as many ads as possible in front of visitors.

Shortly thereafter, the company imploded as the expectations they sold to advertisers and investors never materialized. One of the cornerstones of their offering, by the way, was a personal electronic health record. Guess how popular that was? (Hint: How many people do you know use the drkoop.com PHR? None, because it no longer exists.)

Drkoop.com was launched with a former Surgeon General of the U.S. From a medical reputation perspective, it doesn’t get any better than that. And it failed — miserably. The only people who made out well in that company are the executives who golden parachuted to financial safety, many of which were actually rewarded for the company’s losses.

Fast forward to 2008. Revolution Health launched to much fanfare in 2007, and in a pre-launch blog entry still on the website, Steve Case wrote:

We aim to build RevolutionHealth.com into the world’s leading health site – and we hope that our focus on an engaging design, high levels of personalization, and an unparalleled sense of community will enable us to achieve that goal. But we’re far more than a web site. We’re a company that’s trying to fundamentally change the health care system. Revolution Health is about making sense of the complicated world of health care. And it’s about putting you-the patient-at the center of that world. [...]

We know health care is complex, and striving to revolutionize the health care system is full of risks. But the team at Revolution Health is up for the challenge. We aren’t expecting overnight success, and we know this will be a hard slog. But we are committed to seeing this through.

So what happened? Why, only a year and half into this grand challenge to change the U.S. healthcare system are they looking for a buyer? Why is every other large online e-health company talking to them about a possible merger? And what happened to their commitment to seeing this through?

I can’t say what happened for certain, since I don’t have any unique insight into the company. But from what I can piece together, it looks like the company suffered from classic startup problems — overbuilding far too quickly for traffic and sales that never materialized. They partnered or bought companies that had little to do with their core mission. They did this just to build their “network” of sites, but had no strategy to monetize them. Why buy other health websites with substantive traffic only to shut them down and not even bother redirecting the traffic lost?

Social networking sites, as another example, have great traffic and page view numbers, but advertisers run screaming from their user-generated content. So the traffic is virtually worthless. All of this looks good on paper, in spreadsheets and on ComScore, but provides little return on value. And does little to put “you — the patient — at the center of that world.”

So Revolution has been cutting corners ever since it launched, according to folks in the trade. Layoffs seem to have occurred with alarming regularity, with the last round closing down their employer business. It’s not clear to me how one can start a revolution in personal health care if one is busy shutting down one’s business divisions and laying off employees every quarter (attributed to their acquisitions, which at least isn’t entirely untrue).

And now this — their putting themselves on the sales block. I guess it was inevitable, since a merged entity of some sort would seem to be better positioned to compete with the WebMD behemoth. But wasn’t this also obvious 2 years ago? I mean, what kind of genius or fool does it take to say, “Sure, we can take on this established, 10-year-old entity in just a year or two’s time on our own!” A harder nut to crack, for sure.

But it must really be disheartening when one’s own medical bloggers start talking behind the scenes about the discontent and unhappiness in the company. Half the company’s medical advisers seem to have little relationship with the company (other than collecting an occasional check), and the other half are a little disconcerted the direction the company seems to be taking.

Which brings me to wondering out loud — who will benefit when Revolution Health merges or is consumed by another company? Will it be its remaining employees, a significant number of which will also be on the chopping block in a merger? Will it be the investors, who’ve already sunk an amazing amount of money into a company doing meager business? Or will it be a handful of executives again — much like in the drkoop.com days — who make out with their own golden parachutes on the consummation of some type of merger? I can’t help but wonder what executives with the company now have $1 million+ bonuses waiting for them on the consummation of a merger, all the while half the remaining staff will get shown the door.

I guess this is the nature of big business, whether it be technology or online health. I just sort of hoped that e-health would be different, especially with Steve Case behind it. That people would really stick to their hopes, dreams and mission, and not let quarterly market pressures determine their destiny.

Good luck, Revolution Health — I hope whatever becomes of you, you find a better fate than the late drkoop.com.