Yahoo! has introduced Health Expert Blogs on Yahoo! Health. I'm not sure if this is part of the “social Web” model Yahoo! is gambling their future on, a symptom of what happens when 1 out of 5 Americans has no health insurance, or merely an outgrowth of the blogging phenomenon. Whatever the company's motivation, Yahoo! has really delivered.
There are fourteen blogs covering twelve topics:
- Aging & Caregiving
- Asthma & Allergies
- Breast Cancer
- Child & Family Health
- Cholesterol & Heart Disease
- Depression & Anxiety
- Diabetes and Living With Diabetes
- Nutrition & Weight Loss
- Pregnancy
- Sex & Relationships and Sexual Health
- Sports Medicine & Exercise
- Yoga
Some of the bloggers are “powered by” very prestigious organizations and institutions. Nutrition & Weight Loss, for example, is provided by Johns Hopkins Medicine. Others, like Sex & Relationships are associated with third-party Web sites.
Yahoo! Health has, in my opinion, always been better than its counterpart at MSN, and the addition of expert blogs has only increased its lead. Yahoo! Health has had discussion boards and has been integrated with Yahoo! Groups for a while now; message boards are the most recent addition to MSN Health & Fitness and the site's health experts don't interact with them. Oddly enough they don't blog either; they selectively respond to email instead (the “Ann Landers” model).