Vimo Awards Recognize Nation's Top Diabetes-Related Social Networking Sites and Support Groups on the Web

March 27, 2007 (Mountain View, CA)

Vimo, the Internet'sleading healthcare comparison-shopping site, today announced awards for thenation's top web-based support groups for diabetics and the people thatcare about them. The awards are in coordination with American DiabetesAlert Day: today, March 27th. The Alert, sponsored by the American DiabetesAssociation, is an annual one-day call-to-action held on the fourth Tuesdayof March for people to find out if they are at risk for diabetes. The goalof the Vimo Awards and the Alert is to raise the awareness that diabetes isserious, you can have diabetes and not even know it, and that taking theADA Risk Test is an easy way to find out if you are at risk.

The Vimo awards announced today call out many smaller sites, inaddition to the bigger "household name" health sites, for specialrecognition. Vimo hopes that the awards inspire consumers to educatethemselves and explore the Web to find the diabetes communities that bestmeet their needs.

The Vimo Awards are based on an analysis and review of over 100diabetes-related websites. A judges' committee consisting of healthprofessionals, marketing professionals and health consumers evaluated thesites. These 100 candidate sites together represent most of dedicatedtopic-specific sites (or sub-sites) covering diabetes and targeted atconsumers in the United States.

Vimo's research team gathered data through published materials, phoneinterviews and the Internet. While the Vimo website presents a broad rangeof quantitative comparative information on insurance carriers, healthcareproviders and health products & services, these new Vimo Awards focus onthe more qualitative aspects of the consumer experience when seekingadvice, community and support from others dealing with a specific conditionlike diabetes.

Chini Krishnan, Vimo's CEO says, "There are a lot of sites out therefor people to choose from, and it's difficult to make an apples-to-applescomparison. So we wanted to focus on the sites that really enabled peopleto connect and interact. We wanted to pay special attention to the factthat the diabetes community is not monolithic. There are dozens ofsub-communities, each with its own special needs and priorities. Vimo knowsthat in health, one size almost never fits all. And that's especially truehere."

This year's Vimo Awards for Outstanding Diabetes Sites go to:

Specific criteria that were included in the panel's decisions included(in no particular order): 1) page rank; 2) quality and depth of content; 3)membership; 4) message traffic; 5) community relevance, and; 6) overallutility. Striving for diversity, the panel considered over 100 sites acrossthe Internet, which ran the gamut from "mom-and-pop" websites to massiveencyclopedia sites sponsored by Fortune 100 companies. For example, GooglePageranks(TM) ranged from 0 for the smallest winning site all the way up to8 for the largest, while group membership ranged from just a few hundred tomany tens of thousands.

Vimo plans to recognize the community-building efforts of many healthwebsites in the coming months, as a supplement to the more academic work ofthe Vimo Research Group, which publishes original research reports on aquarterly basis. In keeping with Vimo's mission of consumer advocacy in thehealthcare space, the Awards will be designed specifically to helpconsumers and small businesses plan better, spend smarter and make the mostof their healthcare dollar.

About Vimo
Founded by industry veterans from WebMD and Valicert, Vimo believesconsumers deserve more power in the healthcare equation. Vimo makes buyinghealthcare and insurance easier, cheaper and much more transparent. Vimo'sunique search technology enables consumers to shop for healthcare the waythey currently shop for other expensive products online -- by researching,comparing prices and hearing feedback from other buyers. Vimo is the onlyInternet destination where users can gain objective, authoritative, andcomprehensive shopping-comparison data about insurance, Health SavingsAccounts (HSAs), medical procedures, doctors and dentists.

Insurance brokers or banks interested in partnering with Vimo can visithttp://www.vimo.com/brokercenter. For partnership opportunities, e-mailpartners@vimo.com. For more information, call Vimo at 650-230-0065 or visithttp://www.vimo.com/.