Looking for a Healthier Life Online?
by
on January 29, 2007,
Today Wellshpere has been launched - a new social network for people who instead of merely wanting to be healthy are ready to do something to reach the goal.
When you create an account with Wellsphere you will need to enter ZIP - and that's perfectly clear taking into account that some features of the new website are location-based, like looking for a sports activity partner or healthy vegetarian restaurant. After registration you will be brought to ‘Update profile' page to state some information about your health status - height, weight, orientation, body type (and no cheating, you won't be able to reach the healthier, happier life without sharing the truth). But these fields are optional so you may keep your wish to bring your body from "Obese" to "Athletic and toned" private and simply search for the diet and activities you need here.
Besides, the location-related features of the network enable you to kill two birds with one stone: improve your health (lose weight, run a marathon) and find a friend or a relationship at the same time - sometimes it is absence of a partner that stops us from jogging in the morning or skating on weekends. There is a special section to find a partner for your health-related activities here: based on your location the website will search for a user living in your neighborhood and having the interest (and even skill level) required.
In your personal profile you can create your wellspheres by setting two goals: the first goal is what you want to achieve yourself (ranging from "Eat less sugar" to "Learn stress management techniques") while the second goal is your personal area of expertise - something you are skilled in and can help others with. These goals will be used for other users in their searches for advice or companion.
Provided the community of this alpha website is active enough, Wellshpere will grow into a powerful knowledge base of online and local health-related resources and a good and reliable way to meet people who share the same interests. But still it seems that Wellsphere has some exciting tools to make people stay here and use the network eagerly. Especially if the people are too busy to spend time with two social networks - one of them for health and the other one to look for friends and partners. Here is the place to find things and people that will definitely meet your expectation. Besides, the website seems to be efficient enough not to keep you online for hours - we all know it is not the healthiest of all activities, don't we?
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kalipso
Mav
Orient expresS
Zagreb
Opensource 
Michael Fidler 
these are useful ideas. Good post i believe this is about stress management. Looking forward to reading from you more.
Another community site? And this one doesn’t even work. I tried to find people near me that run and there was no one. I looked for articles and I couldn’t figure it out. The site looks very 1997.
2 superleo: Thank you for the nice comment - I’ll try to share with you some further news on interesting startups in future. And it is definitely not limited to stress management - though for some of us it seems to be the most important aspect (unless we have 20 extra pounds)
2 jreisling: It is alpha - I guess you need to be patient if you want to find a running partner. I am almost sure there will be more people soon. Anyway, if you are in the US, you still have a chance to fully use it. If outside, the most interesting features are not for you (here I am talking about myself). Though it is quite difficult for me to understand why some community websites focus on the US only - would it hurt if people could review health-related places in Europe or Asia? Would it hurt if they gave a tool for UK citizens to look for surfing partners?
And what do you mean by “articles”? I have only found reviews of various health-related destinations there. And still it does not look 1997 for me already - and besides, this alpha is here for us to tell what we want to have there.
To make this work, there will have to be a critical mass of visitors to the site. Alpha or not, do you actually think a company that executes an alpha that looks and behaves like this (random database errors, etc.) can actually sustain a vibrant community? It’s not even genuine in spirit. A quick search shows that they posted a bunch of fake insider posts on TechCrunch and VentureBeat — they didn’t even have the saavy to use different names. Don’t be a PR lemming. This company wants to use genuine people with genuine needs for self-promotion, and they can’t even do that well…
I guess they first need promotion to get the “critical mass of visitors”. And I am quite sure that there are some affiliations behind this startup given all the buzz in blogosphere - which is rare for an Alpha.
Svetlana, I don’t understand… you _ARE_ the buzz in the blogosphere. At best, you are a blogger blogging about blogging. At worst, you are a shill. Which is it? I guess it’s possible that you posted something you saw elsewhere to ride on the bandwagon, but sadly you were duped. Go try out the site. It’s really a non-event.
Well, I only blogged about something that seemed to be interesting. At least I find the idea of launching alpha more revolutionary than everyone else’s Betas.
That is why I can say that my opinion is unbiased - I liked the idea and I said so. Will the idea evolve into a strong community? That’s another question and we’ll need to wait and see. But anyway given the buzz chances are that people will join the community just out of curiosity (and maybe even won’t be too annoyed with database errors) - that will mean growth of the community.
And if not for TechCrunch, no one would have noticed this launch at all. And I am definitely not a shill - I have not accepted no money or rewards from them. And I did not post their jobs for $200 each on Profy job board
Just because something gets airtime on TechCrunch or just because something is a good idea doesn’t mean anything. Execution is key in the Valley and Wellsphere has fallen flat. I don’t understand really what a Wellsphere is, the functionality is available other places, and the site is buggy and complicated. I wish when analysis was done on companies, people would actually look at the capabilities instead of riding the wave of buzz.
I guess the only option for me from now on is to criticize everything praised on TechCrunch
Anyway, we have duplicates of similar ideas now - and rarely we question their existence: usually only the good things are copied. As for the execution: the website did not seem complicated - I guess it is rather intuitive. And personally I have not found any bugs - maybe I should have spent a couple of days there as a tester:)
And I still think that these guys are backed by good money - and the buzz shows they will manage to bring enough users to build the community. So maybe this duplicate will be more successful than original things?
I don’t get it. we are 2 months past this post. this site still doesn’t work. it looks bad, and when i googled it i only got bad comments and reply. they were not worth a post. or maybe the only one they should have got is “how did you raise $3M ????”
there are many sites like this. and this is the worse.
you should check out mdjunction and dailystrength. much better.
When have you heard of an alpha testing completed within 2 months - it’s just ridiculous
I mentioned it is a funny experiment - to launch an alpha, not even a beta. And I never mentioned we would only have to wait for a couple of month. Besides, they got $3M, and believe me, major part of this pretty large amount will go for promotion (development of such a website can not take over half a million at the most). Honestly, I was not paid for the post - we never publish paid reviews actually at Profy BUT we will hear of them again and again, this money is enough for a large-scale promotion.
And yes, there are many sites like this - and rarely anyone launches anything really unique these days. So what? It was a release and it was worth mentioning on many-many blogs. Why not? People have the right to know of new websites and new options for them - that is what I actually believe in. And they can always make their own opinions.