????Joe...Facebook anyone????

[Merridith]

Mmmmm. I don't really agree with Gerri that fear of Facebook or ignorance of how the site works was a motivator for my cautionary post.

I too am a Facebook user and consider myself a fairly high-end digital consumer.

But I would urge the people setting up this group to very carefully consider the possibility of the future potential risk with regards to health insurance access and employment discrimination that the members of a HER2 group would be accepting and complicit in encouraging.

For the sake of debate - how about looking at other types of social networking that are less exposed to commercial exploitation?

One possibility which might appeal to you that could be used in conjunction with this current site is a downloadable tool which gives users the ability to "see" each other in real time when they are simultaneously surfing any website & converse with each other. An example of which is here http://www.rocketon.com/a/index.php. (I haven't researched this example - but there are other analogous choices out there)

Another possibility would be a group membership at Second Life. This is one of the biggest, fastest-growing avatar based virtual reality worlds on the internet. Universities offering classes, banks, law firms and Reuters news wire all have virtual bases in this world. A base can be set up so that membership can be either "open" or "invitation only" http://secondlife.com/whatis/

Another possibility is Twitter - I think Tweets can be anonymized more effectively than Facebook membership.

[atdec05]

That certainly is an eye-opener about Facebook.
That said, I do have an account and have friended several Her2 members.
It's nice to share photos that way.

There are other groups on FB like Susan B. Komen, so I wonder how they get around the individual thing.

- Anna
on FB at http://www.facebook.com/people/Anna-Fang/632381336

[ElaineM]

I am not fearful of Facebook. I am selective.
I am a pretty private person. One cannot be too careful about "what's out there" for the whole world to see and use. I don't want a site like Facebook to have rights to my information.
I don't even click on forwarded messages my friends and relatives send me. I just delete them unopened and
move on to real e-mails from real people bringing me news and friendship.
I also think having one meeting place like we do here is better than having two meeting places. I like our her2support.org site and probably wouldn't visit Facebook anyway.
I would like to suggest that our friends who have Facebook sites, websites or blogs and want visitors from our site feel free to put your contact information in your profile, so thoe who from our site who wish to visit you at other places on the internet can do that.