HealthBoards

HealthBoards.com

Type	Private
Industry	Healthcare, Internet
Founded	Los Angeles, California, USA (July 26, 1998)
Headquarters	El Segundo, California, USA
Key people	Charles Simmons, Founder and President (1998-2011) Robert Brisco, President and CEO, Internet Brands
Website	http://www.healthboards.com/

HealthBoards is a long-running social networking support group website. It consists of over 280 Internet message boards for patient to patient health support (also referred to as a virtual community or an online health community). HealthBoards was one of the first stand alone health community websites. Health communities prior to it had generally been part of large web portals (WebMD, Yahoo, iVillage, etc.). The HealthBoards members post messages to share information and support on a wide range of health issues such as Cancer, Back Pain, Autism, and Women’s Health. As of October 2013 the site had over 1 million registered members, 5 million posted messages, and over 10 million monthly visitors.

History

HealthBoards was founded in 1998 by Charles Simmons, a Software Engineer in Los Angeles, California. In 1997, after experiencing a variety of symptoms for which doctors had no explanation, Simmons turned to the Web for answers and support. When he did not find online support groups in the areas he needed, he realized that there was a need for a health support website covering a wide range of health topics. After a year of development, HealthBoards was launched on July 26, 1998 with 70 message boards. The original site was developed using custom Perl software written by Simmons. HealthBoards quickly gained popularity. In January 2001 the site began using an internet forum software package called UBB. By November 2003 HealthBoards had reached 100,000 members. Due to considerable growth in traffic and problems with UBB, the site was transitioned to VBulletin 3.0, a more robust internet forum software system. After 2003 HealthBoards experienced its most rapid growth and became one of the largest health communities on the Web. In 2005 HealthBoards was rated as one of the top 20 health websites by Consumer Reports Health WebWatch. Selection for inclusion as a "Top 20" site was based solely on web traffic volume. These sites were then evaluated using criteria developed by Consumers Union in partnership with Health Improvement Institute. Areas of evaluation included ease of use, accessibility, transparency, editorial adequacy, advertising, and information reliability among others. The site was among 8 that received an overall good rating though it’s evaluation at the time noted its content ”...has no authoritative information, anyone can post any claim”. In 2011 the site was acquired by Internet Brands.

Operation

On HealthBoards, health topics are given individual message boards. Each message board typically contains thousands of discussion threads, each relating to a specific question, comment, or response initiated by a HealthBoards member. Participation on HealthBoards requires free membership registration. Users who register must supply an email address and an anonymous login name. Users who are not registered may still view and search all the contents of the message boards, but cannot post messages.

The boards are moderated to keep the posts free of spam, but the boards are often over moderated. Several users have complained of their unfair moderation techniques and they have received a 6% site approval rating because of this. Those who wish to look for a forum with a more friendly moderation approach are recommend to go to webmd health boards instead.

Revenue model

HealthBoards’s business model is advertisement based. Advertisers buy ads directly from HealthBoards or through partners such as Google. The website is full of advertisements and popups. Upon registration the user is also prompted to fill out surveys. This website is more about advertising than anything else.

See also

• Online communities
• List of Internet forums

Sources

• Consumer Reports HealthRatings.org Top 20 Health Information Websites {{one source}}

External links

• Healthboards site