Announcing Men's Issues at Gather

First let me say this is in no way to be considered as competition for the excellent discussion group, Men's Issues Online. Or Mensactivism, for that matter. This is something else entirely. In fact if the guys from either of those would like to join us at Gather, they'd be quite welcome to promote the heck outta their valuable activist efforts!

Right now, there is no centralized location where people can get a handle on men's issues in a general-interest community. While there are many politically-oriented sites and groups that occasionally feature "our" issues, and most of you already have your own websites, networks and e-mail discussion groups, I thought you'd all like to have the opportunity to reach a new group of people.

This is at no cost to you in terms of dollars and cents. In fact, you might even make a few bucks! Here's Gather's PR site.

With these ideas in mind, I've set up a group at Gather, which is termed a social networking site, but is entirely unlike the kinds of social networking sites that immediately come to mind, such as Linked In or Facebook. Gather is not so much about simply connecting with people, but is more about publishing content a large number of people will read. (Not kids, either!) What intrigues me about Gather is that it is a growing community, and they’re always coming up with new ideas to promote the site as a whole. Many on Gather are new to the internet, and for some this is their only online activity.

Unlike blogs, which need to be constantly promoted and updated at least daily, Gather provides the ability for individuals to publish occasional content, which is available to search engines. Both your individual postings as a member and the group as a whole also have RSS feeds, so your readers can keep track of new articles in their aggregators without adding to their e-mail load.

So far nobody else has yet set up a group for our kinds of issues. It’s always good to be on the ground floor! Our group is described as: "The first centralized location to learn more about the variety of men's issues, from the leaders of the movement."
The way I have things set up, membership is moderated, which means that while everyone at Gather can read new articles from our group, only our invited members can post, which assures quality content.

You wouldn't even need to write anything new; you can use the group for simply re-posting what you've already posted to your blog or network, and taking advantage of a completely new audience to promote your work and/or your organization. As a Gather member, of course you can branch out into other groups, and when you post something, you can also post it on as many groups as you like within Gather -- or even set up another group of your own!

This is a whole new opportunity, and I hope you'll join us! There's also a post on who else is already there.