Tech Mentat

As the old saying goes, if you put out a good product and write a catchy post about the product - you’ll get dug to hell.

Yesterday Mr. Ethan Hayes posted Understanding 50 Medical Symptoms that described 50 common symptoms people have and need to know about. The blog was in celebration of our [Healthline.com’s] new Symptom Search tool (really great tool if you haven’t checked it out yet). It was a great post for a great tool.

I am happy to report that the post just made digg’s most popular and we are already seeing a significant traffic bump from digg. This is a great moment for us over here at Healthline for a few reasons - 1) because the web marketing team has been working around clock for almost a year now trying to move paid and organic traffic (so it’s a nice win for us) and 2) (this one is more important) its a HUGE win for our developers who work tirelessly trying to develop a semantic medical website based off a constantly evolving taxonomy. These guys (and girls) created this thing out of a need to give better information to the consumer and a more usable way (more than just search results). They worked so hard and I am happy to see people (diggers) honoring their work.

Last little thing: I am typically Healthline’s biggest critic (I feel that is part of my job in order to help make the company better) but seriously Healthline’s Symptom Search beats the shit out of WebMD’s and MayoClinics - their products (while cute) provide HORRIBLE results and getting to actual usable information is a mouse trap.

Ok. Enough of beating our chest - that’s my one positive company rant for the month.