A Little Insight into my Thinking

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 3 minutes

Don’t be scared off by the title. 🙂

I thought I would take a few minutes and help you all understand some of the new things I’ve been doing around the site while I had some spare time over the holidays. Overall, the thought is to make it as easy as possible for anyone who is interested in this site to follow along. In light of the fact that life has gotten busy, and that has kept me away from writing here as much as I’d like to, I wanted to find ways to make it easier to share things here, and for you all to know when something new is here without having to drop by every day. 🙂

So, I created RSS feeds for comments, added an email subscription list and a Facebook fan page.

I had toyed with the idea of creating a Facebook group, or fan page last year, opting instead to create the Survivors Network on Ning because it allowed me to let the members enjoy some privacy. It is important to me that survivors have a place they can share as much, or as little, information about themselves as they felt safe. Facebook doesn’t really allow that. You have to give up some personally identifiable information, that’s sort of the whole point of Facebook, and so having a Survivors group there meant that all the members would be tied to that information.

On the other hand, I know there are lots of people who read this site, who also use Facebook. Some of whom would love to share some of the content here with their Facebook network or who just want to keep in touch with myself and other readers of the site while they’re spending their time on Facebook. I didn’t think my personal profile was the place to do that. I use my Facebook profile for a number of other reasons, professionally and to keep in touch with family and friends all over the country. Trying to force the connections I have here, and the things I write about here onto that profile wasn’t something I was comfortable doing. Not because I’m hiding anything, I use my real name here and link the site from my other profiles, but because it would mean mixing together things in a way that everyone might not enjoy. I didn’t want everyone who knows me professionally, or through my family, to be forced to see me contemplating child abuse, depression, mental illness, etc, nor did I want folks to know me from this site to have to see me talking about technology and eDiscovery if they aren’t interested. By creating a fan page for both of my websites, I can give you the option to follow what you like. If you’re a big fan of either sites, but don’t care about the interactions I have with family, friends, and coworkers, you can simply became a fan of either site and interact that way. If you want to interact with other survivors on the Facebook platform, you can do so there. If you need more privacy, or want to interact in a safer environment, the Ning network is probably where you want to go. Or you can be part of both. Again, you have options this way. 🙂

One other new thing I’ve added, and will be working to update, is the Delicious links. They’re on the sidebar of both blogs of this site, and will be included each day on the Facebook page. They’re also included if you subscribe to the News and Reviews feed or email lists. That’s been a good tool on my other site to easily share articles and other links of interest without having to take the time to write up new blog posts, so my hope is to provide the same service to this community.

I want to thank the folks who have already signed up to be fans on Facebook, who have subscribed to the different feeds, or who continue to come back to the site and read, leave comments etc. It’s not like I have any advertising budget for any of these services. People only find them because you all spread the word, and they only work because everyone is willing to be part of the community, especially on the Network. None of this would be as valuable without you.

So, however you choose to be part of things here, thanks!

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