Revolution Health has acquired the online properties HealthTalk and SparkPeople in an attempt to dethrone WebMD as the Web’s No.1 health destination. Financial terms of the deals were not disclosed.
Seattle-based HealthTalk serves as an online health information network for patients and caregivers living with a chronic condition. SparkPeople, based in Cincinnati, is designed to help consumers set diet and fitness goals.
“With HealthTalk and SparkPeople,” Revolution Health Group CEO Steve Case said in a statement. “Revolution Health Network is now the second largest health property on the Internet, generating more page views than MayoClinic, EverydayHealth, Yahoo! Health, iVillage Total Health and RealAge combined, putting us in striking distance of being number one.”
Following the acquisition, Revolution Health Network now owns or co-owns five Web sites including RevolutionHealth.com, CarePages.com and drugstore.com.
In late October, Revolution Health laid off 60 employees in an effort to cut costs to match lower-than-expected revenue. At the time, the company said it expected to have 180 employees by Jan. 1. However, with the HealthTalk acquisition, Washington, DC-based Revolution Health will add at least 50 more workers, although those employees are expected to remain to in Seattle.
WebMD Health led the top five Web sites in the online health category with 19.9 million unique visitors (UVs) for the month of October, according to the latest statistics available from ComScore Media Metrix.
WebMD Health was trailed by EverydayHealth with 12 million UVs, NIH.GOV with 9.6 million UVs, Revolution Health Network with nearly 8 million UVs and About.com Health with 7.7 million UVs.
