Gawker: valleywag, sparkpeople

Revolution Health to acquire HealthTalk and SparkPeople?

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 12:44:03 EST

Is Revolution Health showing signs of recovery? The health information site, launched by AOL founder Steve Case, seemed on its deathbed after laying off 60 earlier this fall. Now a tipster alerts us to two acquisitions Revolution Health will announce later this week. We're not sure if that's a sign of new life, or an acknowledgement that past startup buys have disappointed.

Our source tells us Revolution Health will acquire fitness planning Web site SparkPeople and either acquire or settle for a majority investment in HealthTalk, another health information site. No prices disclosed yet. By acquiring two presumably successful businesses, Revolution Health returns to the only strategy that's worked for the company so far. When the company reorganized earlier this fall, a tipster told us the only revenue generator the company had was its CarePages unit, a community website it acquired.

Everyone's getting sick of Steve Case

Owen Thomas — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 13:42:19 EDT

Perhaps former AOL CEO Steve Case should get better insurance for his workers at Revolution Health. When they're not lying down on the job, employees at his poorly run startup targeting the healthcare industry are dropping like flies. Here's the latest word from an insider:

On Wednesday, Tim O'Shaughnessy, one of the leading product managers, left along with 3 key developers to do their own startup. This is in addition to the departure of key lead developers last week that were laid off. During an employee lunch meeting today, the morale is at an all-time low.

Ah, but when other staffing plans fail, there's always nepotism.

Another tipster says that after the departure of most of Revolution Health's lead developers, the remaining stalwart is Todd Fisher, son of Revolution CTO Marty Fisher. Ah, family.

Revolution, conveniently, bought Todd Fisher's company, Simo Software, in 2005. Simo was one of four acquisitions by Revolution that year — all of which Revolution has since shut down or left to languish.

To make up for the traffic lost from its failed acquisitions, we hear the company is now pushing employees towards a goal of garnering 5 million Web visitors in five months. To meet that goal, Revolution is spending heavily on search-engine marketing — as much as $700,000 a month, a tipster says. Not that advertising on search engines is such a terrible idea, mind you, if done well and frugally. But at that spendthrift rate, will Revolution have much money left to enter the bidding for diet site SparkPeople, which it's rumored to be interested in?

(Photo of Tim O'Shaughnessy by Robert A. Reeder for The Washington Post)

Diet site SparkPeople to sell for $75M?

Owen Thomas — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 12:41:04 EDT

Odds are you've never heard of Chris Downie, or SparkPeople, the diet site he founded in 2001 after leaving eBay. But buyers seem to be interested. We hear that Downie has a $75 million offer on the table. The site has 2 million unique visitors, according to Alarm:clock, making it the third most popular diet website after WeightWatchers.com and Nutrisystem.com, and is expected to break even this year. Seems like a fat price for such slim profits, but diet advertisements are a lucrative staple of the Web.