Hello- my name is Rob Goldman and I head up product development for naturalpath.com. I was first drawn to Naturalpath because of the importance of finding credible alternative health information online - especially at a time when the internet, with all it's strengths, can be a source of overload and confusion. There's so much information out there, it's often hard to know what's good and what's not. Researching and reading alone can take a lot of time (something we're all short on) but more importantly it doesn't take advantage of some of the emerging potential of the online experience - community.
When faced with a problem I usually seek trusted professional advice. But I also rely on the support and advice of my friends and family, my community. For me, this is a natural way to share and get more information. And that is what I hope the naturalpath.com experience will be - a trusted place to find community and relevant, trusted information.
In the months that I've spent working at naturalpath.com, I've found even deeper meaning in the idea of building nLet taturalpath.com's online health and lifestyle communities. Within online communities we have perhaps greater potential to see beyond ourselves. There is a clear line that starts with our personal health (what we eat and how we take care of ourselves), and continues through our consumer choices and results in environment impact. When we discuss these issues together we see more clearly the larger context of our personal decisions. Everyday health choices such as eating food without high fructose corn syrup be related not only to weight management but to childhood obesity, our farming practices, fertilizers and water quality.
What does all this mean for the naturalpath product? Well, for the alpha release, we focused our efforts in making the experience convenient, trusted and engaging. We concentrated on making our registration secure and simple, providing easy to use social tools (such as blogging, rating and reviewing) and developing compelling content. I hope you find this initial release useful and fun.
At the core of naturalpath.com we hope to provide great rating, reviewing and filtering tools. Sometimes called "collaborative filtering", our platform can take all kinds of content and information online (video, articles, people) and allow them to be rated and reviewed. With an active, vocal community, the good information, the sources your community finds the most relevant will always be presented first. So, get vocal! Tell us what you think, let's start the conversation!
-Rob
