Revolution Health lays off an entire business unit
Revolution Health, the company founded by former AOL Time Warner chairman Steve Case, has laid off its entire business-to-business unit, according to a tipster. In the rest of Revolution Health, there's little sign of its original mission — helping consumers lower healthcare costs. Instead, it's operating a series of vaguely health-related websites, and selling banner ads against them, a push for traffic for traffic's sake which began last year. But most recently, another source tells us, Revolution's pageview games have started to look desperate:
According to my sources, Steve Case's Revolution Health has signed a deal to act as the exclusive ad rep for DailyStrength.org and its 40 MM+ pageviews with minimum quarterly revenue guarantees. The deal reportedly includes traffic assignation in comScore.
However, word is that Revolution may not issue a press release on the deal because they may be afraid ComScore is looking at whether Revolution really fits within the Health category. The representation of advertising and traffic for Daily Strength, a social networking platform that could be best described as a "feel good Facebook-lite," isn't likely to help their case.
A ComScore rep says that DailyStrength is still categorized in "Health," so what Revolution is doing is legitimate, barely. But advertisers are skeptical of the value of social-network traffic. While the deal could boost Revolution's traffic figures, the guarantees will likely prove costly, which could lead to another round of pink slips. And it's never a good sign for a Web startup when developers bail. I really hope the rest of the workforce has put money tax-free into healthcare savings accounts, and read up on Cobra law. That is, if Revolution Health even offers those programs to employees. It only recently started offering group healthcare to employees, we hear. (Photo by Christopher Carfi)