www.SharingHope.tv

Hosted by the American Cancer Society, SharingHope.tv is a multimedia-focused support community providing cancer patients and survivors an online hub to connect and learn from each other through digital online videos and photos about their cancer experiences.

Membership is free and required if you want to share a video or comment. But, you can still view everything and listen to audio without logging in. There are also “help videos” with step-by-step instructions on how to post a video to the website.

David Neff, director of the ACS’s Web, Film and Interactive Strategy for the High Plains Division, says SharingHope.tv is a welcoming community built around the subject of cancer where people can share stories and hope through audio, videos, photos, and blogs. “Our site is all about social media and helping spread the message of hope,” says Neff.

The community has 12 “channels” so far, including “Share Your Cancer Story,” “Help Videos,” “Relay for Life,” and the newest addition, “Advocacy and Activism.” The channels sort videos into categories so they are easy to find, and while most videos will fit into one of the current categories, Neff says he hopes to add new channels in the future, such as “Kids and Cancer” or daily blogs by survivors.

“And we’re very reactive,” Neff says. “Somebody e-mailed me two months ago and said, ‘Why don’t you have an advocacy channel?’ And I said, ‘Duh, that’s perfect.’ And within a week, we had that channel built and ready for them to upload videos to.”

With more than 400 registered users and more than 800 media files posted since the site was launched in February, SharingHope.tv sets itself apart as a leader in the .tv domain, which, according to Neff, is the forward-facing multimedia domain for the next five to 10 years.

“People live in their social network, so everything on our site is taggable—you can take it off and embed it on your blog; you can take it off and put it on your Facebook page. We really believe in information flow. We just built into the system that everything is shareable, hence SharingHope.tv.”