Nascent

We've relaunched Nature Network, continuing the focus on Boston, but enabling other cities too, London is next. It builds on the concept of social software for scientists and extends it to a global audience, anyone can signup and take part in the conversations.

We've redesigned the application visually and added message board functionality which is tightly integrated with the existing groups. On the site you can post local events, see local job listings and each city has a local news magazine.

Nature Network draws on the best ideas in community software on the web. We are planning to continue iterating the functionality, but if you have particular ideas, then tell us on the forums. Some novel aspects of the site present themselves in tagging and in forums.

Tagging acts as bookmarking or favouriting internally, anyone can tag pretty much anything with a tag and multiple people can tag the same thing with the same word. In this way users can tag content on Nature Network to make a meaningful library of useful information for themselves. Tagging is present across every content type and acts as internal navigation between content types, you can easily see which people are interested in Psychology when you are reading message board topics on the Psychology.

Every topic on the forums is taggable, so the tags become a core navigation device. They can be used to subdivide a forum into a particular facet, or you can draw on a tag across multiple forums. The former is helpful in busy forums where there are multiple subjects addressed at the same time, eg renewables might have wind and solar. The latter is useful for broader issues that might work as a forum on their own, ethics or a particular technique perhaps.

The forums are are very community focused, anyone can reply to a topic, asking a question joins you to the group that hosts the forum, thus drawing people in to visible communities, rather than anonymous postings.

Lastly Nature Network is a social network, so everyone gets a public profile page, which they can keep from job to job. They can create their own network of friends and contacts of interesting people they meet. Activity on the site is relayed within this network, so it is easy to keep up to date with colleagues. All of these networking is under the user's control via privacy settings.

We hope that Nature Network will be a great place for scientists to meet one another and talk about science. It supports those whose work is focused on a particular area those whose work is interdisciplinary, allowing them to converse on a unique platform for scientists. Have a look and signup