David Isserman, one of the founders of RareShare will be co-hosting a live online discussion about RareShare on the Washington Post website tomorrow, February 10th, at 12PM Eastern. Click here to access the dedicated discussion page on WashingtonPost.com.
To help spread the word about RareShare, we created a RareShare group on Facebook. Feel free to join and invite others to join by visiting: http://www.facebook.com/business/dashboard/#/group.php?gid=42672857178
RareShare had a nice write-up on TechCrunch today. Click here to check it out.
We are really excited to let everyone know that we recently competed in and won Pace University’s 5th Annual Pace Pitch Contest in the category of social ventures. The contest was held in New York last week and included participants from several outstanding social enterprises. We plan to contribute the prize money towards improving and expanding RareShare. You can check out the Pace University Pitch Contest website at http://www.pace.edu/page.cfm?doc_id=14204.
We’re very excited to announce a new initiative at RareShare called the Community Partnership Program. It offers health advocacy and patient support organizations a way to build awareness through RareShare. This is completely free to organizations selected to participate in the Program. For more information about the Progam and how to apply, please download and review the PDF below.
One of the main features of every RareShare community is its discussion forum. We set these up as a way for members to post questions and answers about their disorder and to share useful information with other community members.
One thing we’ve noticed since entering beta late last month is that RareShare communities which have forum posts tend to attract more participation from other RareShare members. This is why we continue to suggest that every member try to post at least once to his or her community.
Here are just a few of the things you can do on the RareShare community forums:
Additionally, when a member posts to his or her community forum, that community is then added to the “Recently Updated Communities” section. This builds visibility for that community.
As always, feel free to email us at suggestion [at] rareshare.org if you have any feedback or suggestions for the Site.
Thanks to everyone for sending in suggestions for the Site. We’re taking these suggestions seriously and over past couple of weeks, we’ve implemented several of them. These include:
Improved Design
We improved the design to make it easier for members to use and navigate the Site
Automatic Notifications
Members can now opt-in through their profiles to be alerted when their communities are updated
Refer a Friend
Communities now feature an invitation box that allow members to easily invite others to join their community
Improved Search
The “Community Search” now scans all communities by name and synonyms
Expert Q&A
Each community now includes an expert question and answer section. Once an expert is added to a community, community members can ask questions about their particular disorder
Suggest a Community
Users can now suggest communities to be added to the RareShare network through a simple form.
We’re constantly working to improve RareShare for our members, so keep those suggestions flowing. You can email them directly to suggestions@rareshare.org.
The international technology blog, ReadWriteWeb, has reviewed RareShare! Click here to read the post by Frederic Lardinois.
We had a great article published in today’s Toronto Star. Click here to check it out.
Thank you for being so patient as we prepare for the early beta launch of RareShare. I’m excited to let you know that everything has been progressing on schedule and we’re getting very close to our launch.
A special thank you to all of you who have signed up for the “Request an Invite”. As we continue to setup communities within RareShare, yours will be at the top of the priority list. For those who haven’t yet signed up, feel free to do so and we’ll make sure your communities are added to the priority list as well.