Message Regarding New Community at HealthShare Groups

[Guest guest]

Dear Members,

Below is the message that I sent to Shireen explaining the changes taking place.

In describing HealthShare Groups , I would say it offers greater opportunity for interaction much like Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, and will help in outreaching to others seeking support.

It is my desire to offer members a more interactive experience and the Group communities are becoming stale.

Here was my response to Shireen......

Shireen, I hear and understand your concern and will share with you my vision and desire for the group. I have been working with providing support groups for people for over 10 years now. I started my first groups with eGroups back in the late 1990's. Today, I have over 650 groups on with over 80,000+ members. While has been good to us, they have fallen behind in terms of technology and tools available for social networks. What we have seems to be all we will ever be able to do. I do not have the ability to add, change or make improvements to the groups or offer members other ways of interacting and sharing with one another. By creating my own website, I now have the tools and ability to enhance members experience in sharing and outreach to others. The biggest benefit is that members will be able to particpate in their own disease/disorder specific support sub-group; and, they will have the ability to share with thousands of others in other support groups. HSG is the umbrella group and currently offers over 200 sub groups for the specific disease/disorder. Here is a list of all the tools now available to us. I will soon be adding additional applications to enhance members experience. Unique Member ProfilesWe now have the ability to develop our own network profile questions. Let members customize their profile pages with their own design, choice of widgets and profile applications. Customize advanced member search based unique profile questions, including location.

Moderation & PrivacyThe HSG is a private community for members only. All members are screened before being added to our community. This will help ensure that we can keep out "SPAMMERS" and stop the flood of unwanted mail from and/or other advertisers.

Invite and ShareWe now have a rich invitation engine, with full web address book and .csv file importing to enable members to invite new members. Members can also cross-post status updates on Twitter and Facebook, and share content across the Internet with additional built-in tools.

Latest ActivityWe now have a real-time, dynamic activity feed of everything happening within our community, including status updates from members. This allows us to track activity and encourage more engagement.

RSS FeedsWe now have the ability to pull in RSS feeds from a blog, website or news source for an ongoing stream of information flowing into our communty.

Photos and VideosMembers can upload and share photos and videos. Members also have the option to embed their branded photo slideshows or video players anywhere on the Web, with a link back to our community. This will enable us to outreach to others looking for support.

Chat / Video ChatThe chat feature gives members the ability to chat not only with members of their own sub-group but with members of other groups facing similar situations and/or issues. This will help facilitate the sharing of ideas, educate others about our disease/disorder and broaden our abilities to offer support.

GroupsMembers will soon be given the opportunity add their own sub-groups to our community to help facilitate interaction. Member groups will be required to meet guidelines in keeping with the purpose and intent of our community. We will not allow any group containing pornography or for illegal purposes. This will give members the ability to collaborate by sub-group; geography, committees, special interests, etc.

Discussion ForumThe HSG has multi-threaded discussion forum with categories, photos and attachments. Members have the ability to create their own Forums within their own sub-groups or post messags on the HSG forum on our MAIN page.

Blogs for Every MemberEvery member of our community has the ability for Blogging.

EventsEvents can now be created and shared with whole community. This will also enhance our abilities to spread the word about what is going on in our world. Now, as to what will be happening with the , I am hoping in time that members will find our new home more to their liking. The will remain open to current members but will eventually become only a resource for archived information. New members are no longer being allowed to join the and are being directed to HealthShare Groups. The only way for you to really check out the HSG community is by joining. You can always leave if and when you want. Does this help you any?