We’ve written about social networking platforms that are tailored for the science and research community. ResearchGATE aimed to be the LinkedIn for Scientists. Today, Sciencefeed is launching as a realtime micro blogging platform designed specifically for scientists.
Sciencefeed allows users to post short microblogs (not restricted to 140 characters) on scientific headlines, new findings, controversy, conferences and ideas related to science. You can follow users; respond to other member’s entries, and comment on various topics in realtime. You can search for topics and keywords fairly easily and publish updates to Twitter and Facebook. Since conferences are an integral part of scientific research, Scienfeed allows users to create groups around events and even aggregate updates from participants based on a hashtag, similar to Twitter. Publications can be attached to a feed, allowing users to automatically search through 10 different literature databases (such as PubMed) and RSS feeds.
Co-founder of Sciencefeed, Dr. Ijad Madisch, says that he launched the platform because the science and research community was looking for a Twitter-like social media platform that was tailored to the industry. The biggest challenge Sciencefeed will face is to recruit users to the platform; but the startup could forge partnerships with research institutions to gain a loyal following.