You may or may not have noticed my absence for the last two weeks, I hope I was missed. I was on a business trip to Austin, Texas, to meet with out technology supplier so we could discuss new features for doc2doc and how best to launch them

I previewed some exciting updates and tweaks and I used this opportunity to feedback on points community members had raised about usability and performance problems.  

During this time I also attended an event for social media managers like me to network and discuss best practices for managing online communities, companies. I met colleagues from USA Today, Sky and Conde Nast. They offered some good experiences from their own community sites. From speaking to these media giants I came away thinking that doc2doc was doing well in terms of its content and access controls. We aim to provide a professional and well maintained online environment.

What users can expect from doc2doc in the next six months

▫ My doc2doc (persona/profile) overhaul.

We realise that currently there is little reason to revisit your persona. We aim to make your doc2doc profile the stop place to go when you log on. New features will include, following your friends’ activities, posting status updates and photo galleries. We hope this will offer doc2doc members a richer experience.

You should also be able to access members’ profiles (personas) from any piece of content, without having to click to another page. We created this after numerous members said they wanted to interact with others, such as sending private messages, but without having to leave the forum page/blog post they were on.

▫ Blogs:

Currently blogs need to be posted in different categories.

Soon doc2doc will use a blogroll instead. This will feature all the blogs posted on doc2doc in the same area. The blogroll will feature advanced tagging which will allow for greater searching of relevant content. Blogs will also be able to be displayed by author, or according to the date they were posted.

▫ Forums

In the next few months the community team will be reviewing the forums homepage and how we display our closed clinical forums. If you are interested in beta testing/reviewing changes to our site before they are released to the community, please drop me an email at disaacson@bmjgroup.com

▫ Facebook and Twitter integration

A number of you use these social networking sites, so we want to integrate your doc2doc experience with your Facebook and Twitter presences. Soon you will be able to share posts, friends and apps across these sites at the click of a single button. There’ll be more on this in the coming weeks.

Follow us on Twitter : http://twitter.com/doc2doc

Become a fan of doc2doc on Facebook:

▫ Increased performance and stability

doc2doc will be going through some major changes which will allow the site to work on mobile phones and hospital computers (firewall issues would sometimes prevent the site from functioning correctly). These changes should also increase the speed of the site which will help members who on slow internet connections.

Feel free to leave any feedback about your experiences using doc2doc here, in the doc2doc forum or feel free to email me.

David