Web Site to Offer Health Advice, Some of It From Marketers By STUART ELLIOTT
Starting on Thursday, the Web site Sharecare.com is to arrive, offering what its proprietors call an interactive social Q.& A. platform to provide consumers with what they want to know on health and wellness subjects — with the A‘s being contributed by, among others, marketers. Those behind Sharecare, a company formed last year to operate Sharecare.com, hope its features will enable the new Web site to thrive ∈a crowded field. Sharecare.com will begin with content contributed by organizations like AARP, the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, the American Red Cross, the Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins and the National Academy of Sports Medicine, along with medical professionals like Dr. Mehmet Oz. Those contributors are to be known as experts on the site. There is another label, knowledge partners, for marketers that are paying an estimated 1millionto7 million to become sponsors of Sharecare.com. Plans call for the content provided by the sponsors to be labeled, bearing their names and logos, so that visitors to Sharecare.com can distinguish their contributions from those of other sources. Still, some visitors looking for objective answers to questions on health matters may raise their eyebrows at the presence of marketers. In tests of the Web site ∈ the last year, ―the brand answers were read as much as the expert answers,‖ Jeff Arnold, chairman and chief architect at Sharecare ∈Atlanta, added. ―It‘s interesting to see how seriously the brands are taking their answers,‖ Mr. Arnold said, because they know their replies will not be far from those of the experts. There are more than 100,000 answers to questions on Sharecare.com, he added, with a goal of ―a million by the end of the year.‖ ―When the answers are as high quality as they will be, if there is an initial skepticism on the part of the consumer it will quickly go away‖, said Amy Carney, president for advertising sales at Sony Pictures Television ∈New York.
Retirado e adaptado de http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/business/media/07adco.html?ref=health, em 10/10/2010
Considere as afirmações:
I. O site Sharecare.com caracteriza-se como uma plataforma de perguntas e de respostas, as quais serão respondidas por organizações reconhecidas da área da saúde, bem como pelos próprios "comerciantes" da área.
II. O site Sharecare.com praticamente não terá concorrência nessa área, pois não há outros sites do gênero.
III. Os visitantes poderão perceber se o conteúdo disponível no site Sharecare.com foi fornecido pelos especialistas ou pelos patrocinadores.
IV. As respostas fornecidas pelos "comerciantes" no site Sharecare.com, em testes realizados no ano passado, foram tão acessadas quanto as dadas pelos especialistas.
São verdadeiras as afirmações:
