One of the frustrations cropping up on health social media sites is centered around the mechanism that caused their popularity at the outset, the message board. On a typical health social media site like Dailystrength.org or Inspire.com, much of the activity takes place on message boards which are grouped by conditions (asthma, diabetes, etc.). Depending on the site, members can then connect with each other (assuming they found their interaction satisfactory). There are two issues with this approach: one is the level of "noise" found on some of the boards -- the lack of screening in health groups on Facebook, for instance, has meant that many of the posts are irrelevant to patients. The other is the serendipitous nature of the posting process itself, notably, a specific question may not be read by the right party at the time that it is posted. For example, a parent with a newly-diagnosed autistic child who lives in Memphis, TN may only want to hear from another parent with a newly-diagnosed child in the same area. Or even better, another parent who is seeing the same doctor in the area.

FacetoFaceHealth.com, which launched in April, is hoping to facilitate those connections. Nowell Outlaw, CEO of FacetoFaceHealth, likens the message board model to "sitting in a cafeteria full of people and writing your message on a notecard and putting it on the wall - only if someone walks by and sees your message and writes a response to you do you get an answer...So our solution is really the directory of people in the cafeteria - you can see who has what condition, and we point out who is the best match to you - and you can walk up and ask them a question."

FacetoFaceHealth provides a linking mechanism that actively matches people based on health information members provide. The site is designed to securely provide resources, contacts and information not only for patients, but also for the patients' caregivers, parents, spouse or loved ones. Matches are pushed out to members on a weekly basis. If this approach sounds familiar, that's because it is essentially the same approach as Match or eHarmony.

When Outlaw explained the model to me, he likened the approach to LinkedIn but I told him that the first analog that came to mind was eHarmony. He acknowledged that his own wife describes the company as "Match.com for healthcare" -- an analogy he struggles with due to the dating context but accepts as valid.

Where FacetoFaceHealth breaks with the Online Dating model is it's business model which is advertising-driven. FacetoFaceHealth charges advertisers per click and targets advertising towards members who would find specific advertising most relevant. Outlaw added that FacetoFaceHealth does not share member information with advertisers.

Perhaps the business model is another area where health social media could look to online dating. Most people either forget or don't realize that online advertising actually contracted 25% from 2000-2002 during the dot-com bust. With the limits of the advertising model being tested in this current downturn and Facebook mulling the possibility of charging users some type of fee, perhaps the time has come for health social media sites to consider charging users as well. Charging users would certainly eliminate potential conflict-of-interest issues in the burgeoning health social networking field where people's health information is involved. It is a troubling dilemma given that most sites, like Facebook, need scale in order to begin being useful to users. This dilemma has meant opening the gates and providing the service for free in the past. Perhaps a limited free-trial period would allow members to see the benefit of the site before signing up for a membership. It is difficult to believe that users would assign a higher economic value to finding a date Friday night with finding someone who could provide caregiving tips for a parent with Alzheimer's disease.