I was recently asked to join the free networking site facebook (www.facebook.com) And I am starting to add friends to my profile and network there. I also started an OCF group on facebook. If you are not familiar with how web networking works, this is a viral way of getting connected with people around the country, spreading the word about your ideas, (oral cancer for instance) and in the case of OCF getting the foundation and its work noticed. I urge those of you that have time to, to take the 10-15 minutes it takes to set up a profile and start networking. You can all connect to me as your first connection. If you want to see what a profile looks like you ( without being a free member with a profile of your own can see a very abbreviated version of mine by just doing a search for me when you get on their site). Once you fill our your own profile you can see the whole enchilada. The web is becoming a viral way for ideas and connections to spread. Nothing wrong with working all the angles.

I been on face book for a long time now.It is the most wonderful way of keeping in touch with family and friends,and the Mouth cancer foundation has a group network on there too.

i have joined the group this morning and added brian as a friend.

I found brian by searching oral cancer foundation,because there are an awful lot of brian hills on the site.

Thanks to all of you that have signed on today. Seems we have a bunch of facebook people on the OCF site, and one who spent the 15 minutes to fill out their profile today. I am communicating with T. Boone Pickins as a result of my facebook profile. It is amazing who you can get connected to there. I hope that we can get a bunch of people on the OCF part of it that are not just patients, but dental students, doctors, and more that can help us network to get events and more done. This is a true grassroots mechanism to get things happening that goes beyond what those of us can do from the immediate OCF community.

Brian,

I basically signed on to Facebook last semester because it was required for one of my classes. I've never really spent a lot of time out there, but I will now. It's nice to be able to put faces with names and it makes the connections here a lot more personal. Thanks for creating the group on there!

Enjoy your week!

Joy

I am now a new member of Facebook. My full name is Christine Brader. I hope to now see who all my OCF friends are, putting a face with the names.

Thanks for all you do Brian.

Christine

I joined and invited my sisters and some friends as well to the group.
How about myspace next Brian!?

I'm not a my space user. But I am open to anything that will virally spread OCF's message. You want to help us get started there?.... and this time I will follow your lead....

my sisters and I would love to. It can reach more people than facebook! It can also help with the younger crowd. I'll talk to the girls tomorrow and we can design a layout for it.

Amy:

Let me know if you are able to get something going on myspace, Im already registered there.

Hi guys

I dont know about anyone else but it sure would be useful to me if you could put your screen names somewhere when you sign up for facebook.I am struggling knowing who i know and who i dont lol.Its wonderful to see faces at last to put with the names that have been part of my life for so long now.(margeret you are gorgeous!!!)so just to start the ball rolling,i am LIz Read.

Jim where are you? get signed up so we can all get a look!!!!
love liz

I am here at least 2 times a day. I had a myspace and never used it so I think they made me history. LOL I can't even remember my user ID or Password .

Well, I am procrastinating on fixing up and updating an online course I will be teaching in the fall and this gave me a wonderful excuse to do something I don't need to do nearly as urgently ;-)

I'm now on facebook (getting back to work)

Brian, you might want to consider a LinkedIn group. I think that LinkedIn is a more professional networking site than MySpace or Facebook (just my personal opinion). It's easy to set up a group there.

Jean

Agreed re LinkedIn, as well as Facebook and MySpace -- each hits different target age groups. LinkedIn is, as Jean notes, particularly good for professional networking.

-- Leslie

I would like that too as I have had very, very bad experiences with the computer and Facebook attributed to a lot of it...I would much rather look at something more professional as I don't see myself doing the facebook...but will certainly go wherever I need to go to get the information that I need.

That's my personal opinion.

Thanks!
Paula

I am a inked in member. If someone sets up the organization on there, I think we should all identify ourselves as OCF members so that people see what the common denominator is in all of us. You are right, my linked in profile has hooked me up to valuable business connections, and the other sites are social. I have NO social connections on my LInkedin page. There is a place for both, however if we do this on Linkedin, it has a different purpose. Obviously viral spread is still the solution to spreading the word.

I have never talked with anyone before that attributed computer problems to Facebook. I am curious what you feel they were.

Me too sinced I just signed up there and don't want to do anything that would cause that kind of problem!

Other than some simple JAVAscripts, there is nothing about Facebook that should cause computer problems. Now if your JAVA has not been updated in awhile, I supposed that could cause some "funny lookin" screens.

Kevin

mine didn't cause me to have computer problems...it was my ex husband behind the scenes...facebook itself never did anything to my system. Just a nut of an ex-husband:-) And facebook may have improved a lot as this was about 5 years ago, I just have a bad taste in my mouth for it....my daughters use it all the time.

hope that clarifies for you.
Thanks!

That's good to hear. With millions of people on Facebook, and the rave reviews it has gotten on 60 minutes etc. I couldn't believe that it had some kind of issue when you viewed it on your computer.

Hi thanks for the hook up I am looking forward to being able to put faces to names too...I feel as if I know you all ready ...this is great I use face book every day helps pass the time...

Thanxs
Dianne

I'm late to this discussion but felt I should post this information as I just read it on a newslink I get from ZDnet:

"My colleagues at Kaspersky Lab (see disclosure) have intercepted two new worms squirming through MySpace and Facebook, using social engineering lures to plant malware on Windows systems.

The worms propagate via the comments features on the two popular social networks, using video lures and fake Flash Player downloads to trick end users into installing malicious executables."

So, as with so many internet sites you need to be careful what you do.

The full article can be found here: http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1615&tag=nl.e550

Anyone navigating the web with any regularity without spyware or virus defense that is current is at risk at many sites. Just having a PC instead of a MAC multiplies your risk by factors of hundreds. The web is not a safe place.

Wow that is so frustrating to have access to something as wonderful as the web for it to be so littered with viruses and harmful things. Without the Web I would never have found this site and all the help it has been to me.

Well at least I can tell you that OCF's servers are protected from much of this, and scanned daily. The world (web or otherwise) is not a safe place, the trick is to understand that and protect yourself.