Honestly, we haven’t blogged much about Revolution Health since their first release in January because, well, there really wasn’t much to say about the site. Far from being a site powered by people and social networking word-of-mouth, Revolution has been buying something like 95-98% of its traffic from search engines (and the occasional bumps from Steve Case’s media appearances shilling for the site). So much for word-of-mouth and igniting a “revolution” in people’s health, because we really thought the company and site would do things differently.

The “official” launch of Revolution Health has taken place today, but try as we might, it seems the service is largely the same as the one from January, with the same re-licensed, re-packaged content and transplanted community. They’ve launched a RealAge clone tool (Know Your Number? I already know it — RealAge told me years ago), and have slightly modified the page layout. But nothing there says, “We’re not this huge corporation just trying to get you to give us your personal information so we can better market our insurance and other health products to you.”

And apparently a $300-400 M valuation doesn’t bring you QA on the homepage, because its layout is quite messed up this morning. The icing on the cake? Most days, Psych Central’s network of growing sites does more traffic (organically, not bought) than Revolution! (But don’t worry, it’s easily rectified by spending even more money to drive traffic to the site.)

Dr. John Grohol is the CEO and founder of Psych Central. He is an author, researcher and expert in mental health online, and has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues -- as well as the intersection of technology and human behavior -- since 1992. Dr. Grohol sits on the editorial board of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking and is a founding board member and treasurer of the Society for Participatory Medicine.

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    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 19 Apr 2007
    Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.