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Nextdoor: The First Mile of Social Networking. Good Magazine Relaunches as Intent-Driven Social Network. Six-year-old Good — the company behind Good Magazine and Good.is — is beginning a new chapter Wednesday, with the relaunch of its website as a digital community for social action. The new Good.is is a place for people interested in creating change to spread awareness for different causes with a like-minded community — think change.org meets Facebook.

It's also a place to read feature-length stories from Good editorial staffers, follow people and organizations with common interests and find opportunities to get involved with nearby. "This platform is built around pushing the world forward," Good Publisher Ben Goldhirsh told Mashable. "We're an interesting, pragmatic community of people who give a damn. The new Good.is has features you're used to seeing from the social networks you're already using — user profiles, a news feed, a to-do list (think Foursquare), and the ability to follow others and build a following. Social Good Summit Information. Social Networking For Authors & Overcoming The Rejection Slip. Yesterday I reviewed the leading social network for book readers, Goodreads. In the second post in my Social Books series, I'm checking out a brand new social network for book writers. Called Writer's Bloq, it was founded by a young wannabe writer from New York named Nayia Moysidis.

In a phone interview, I discovered that Moysidis, a graduate of Columbia University's creative writing program, started Writer's Bloq because of the frustrations she encountered trying to get her first novel noticed by publishers. She'd sent 93 individualized letters to publishing houses, but only received a few generic rejection letters in response. Like many entrepreneurs, Moysidis is a very determined person. After seeing the writer submission process from the other side, Moysidis concluded that publishers are so overwhelmed that they aren't discovering enough new talent. The first thing that struck me about Writer's Bloq when I signed up for a nosey, was the crisp and clean design. Not a Novel Idea. Rootsy’s Private Social Network Lets You Build Your Family Tree Online. Rootsy is the latest entry in the private, family-focused social networking space – an area which has seen a surge of startups in the wake of Facebook’s rise to become the largest social network worldwide.

With little hope of taking on the Facebook behemoth, the new companies are attempting to carve out a niche for more personal sharing. With Rootsy, the angle is that it lets users build their own family tree, which includes family members both living and deceased, and then allows you to upload content like photos, videos and stories to accompany those family members’ profiles. The startup is currently a part of Aol’s tech incubator QLabs (disclosure: Aol is TechCrunch’s parent company) which helps pay the bills, but the eventual goal is to spin off as its own company and raise outside funding.

Previously, during Rootsy’s beta period, it went by the name of “When.com” – a domain name Aol had access to thanks to an events company Aol launched back in 2008. Confirmed: Doctors’ Social Network Doximity Lands Another $17M From Morgenthaler Ventures. Doctors social network Doximity has raised another $17 million at a ballpark $80 million valuation led by Morgenthaler Ventures. The company’s series B financing also included participation from returning investors, Emergence Capital Partners and InterWest Partners.

The announcement today follows the company’s $10.8 million series A raise in March of last year and brings the company’s total funding to just under $28 million. The free communication network for U.S. -based physicians is tackling a huge market in the healthcare space — an area that’s growing like gangbusters thanks to the popularity of wearable medical devices, platforms and apps that now give consumers easier ways to track and make sense of our health data and interact with providers. The market for mobile health apps alone, for example, is forecasted to quadruple to $400 million by 2016. When we last covered Doximity, 30,000 physicians were using the network to connect with other MDs and collaborate on patient treatment.

Fandalism, A Social Network for Musicians. Beyond Facebook: The Rise Of Interest-Based Social Networks. Editor’s Note: This guest post is written by Jay Jamison, a Partner at BlueRun Ventures, who focuses on early stage mobile, consumer and enterprise investments. He also serves on the boards of AppCentral, AppRedeem, Foodspotting, and Thumb. You can follow Jay on Twitter @jay_jamison or read his blog at www.jayjamison.com. With the pending public offering of Facebook anticipated to be the largest tech IPO in history, it’s an interesting time to think about where we go from here. Some say “social is done,” Facebook is all the social media anyone would ever want or need. But while some may pronounce that Facebook is all the social we’d ever need, users clearly haven’t gotten the memo. The numbers tell the tale around users’ appetites for these new interest-based social networks. On Thumb, a community for instant opinions, user engagement has mushroomed in its short history.

Interest-based social networks have a markedly different focus and approach than Facebook. Both.