Obviously we don't want to make the whole thing too complicated, but another idea would be to allow members to tag themselves (under user info or settings) under a number of headings - e.g. EU, Politics, Energy, Sociology, Management.  This would create special interest groups of members interested in - e.g. EU - who would could have their own discussion area/debate area/ collaborative writing space, and who would be notified if a diary/story with that tag is published.

I find that there is a lot of stuff going through ET (and other sites) and to avoid info overload you have to be selective in what you look at. Titles are sometimes misleading and you can miss stuff you would really have been interested in.  Obviously your tags wouldn't preclude you from having access to other stuff as well (and people without an EU tag seeing EU stuff if they want to) - it would just be a way of selectively channeling content your way and building specialist sub-communities - important as the user base gets bigger.

Index of Frank's Diaries