A Preview of the New Gather

The new Gather.com release, named for the minimalist artist Carl Andre, was truly spawned by the Gather community.  We talked with our most active members on the improve.gather.com forum (please join us if you would like to chat about future releases).  We surveyed more than one thousand of you.  We interviewed members.  We interviewed non-Gatherers in our demographic to understand their initial impressions of Gather.  We tested various versions of the release with these groups as well.  And, finally, we did online testing with a number of you to make sure that key tasks on the site were easier to find and easier to complete.

The Carl Andre release makes Gather:

1)    Accessible: The new site features a cleaner look and feel, making it easier for first time visitors and repeat visitors alike to experience the Gather community.  Our new homepage, which will be found at www.gather.com will focus first-time visitors on content that our editors think is particularly interesting to the community.  We will call out not just an article, but a conversation between members to help the world understand the quality of the dialog that occurs here.

 
Our editorial team will also call out groups, members, and images that are particularly interesting as well.

 
2)    Personalized: Each of you will be able to visit my.gather.com, when logged-in, to see what is happening in your world.  It demonstrates the benefits of having friends, family and colleagues on Gather and lets you keep in touch with the people you care about most.  On this page, you will be notified if there is new mail waiting, if there are invitations pending, or if you have been invited to join new groups.  You will also be able to see new articles and images published by your friends, family, and colleagues as well as by members you have subscribed to.  Here, you can also quickly see which of your groups have recent activity and which of your friends have recently been active on Gather.  In short, this page is meant to show you what is new in your world at a glance.

3)    Easier to navigate: We have made several changes to Gather's navigation to help you find the content you want more easily.  First, we have added a menu bar and sub-menus that let you find the articles, images, comments, people, and groups that you want to experience in just a click or two.

Second, we have made tags easier to understand.  We are creating a default list of tags to help members understand the breadth of content on Gather.   We have also redesigned tag pages so that each tag page (e.g. gather.com/food) will feature a list of related tags, related groups, related authors, and relevant content. 

4)    Better access for new members and members on different topics:  The new Gather calls-out new member content in more compelling ways as well.  First, we allow members to simply see new content site-wide and on tag pages.  This allows "sampling" of new people on Gather that have not yet established audiences.  Second, we have broadened opportunities to be seen on Gather by creating more obvious tag navigation, meaning that people who are writing on less popular topics will still have a chance to connect with people sharing their interests.

5)    Better groups experience: Gather Groups™  take a big step forward as well.  First, groups will have much more significant branding than before.  This means that your group can begin to develop its own look and feel, either establishing an identity on Gather or bringing an off-line identity to the site.  Second, members will be able to navigate within the group space, seeing members, articles, and images all within the group's branded space.  Third, Groups will be easier to find.  By placing groups more obviously on tag pages, members will be able to find Gather Groups related to their interests with greater ease.

6)    Extensible: Finally, the new Gather.com platform is easily extensible.  We have built-in placeholders to allow improved group search, member search, content viewing alternatives, an improved invitation system, and our upcoming revised recommendation system.  This new Gather.com look and feel really sets the stage for future growth.

We are excited to bring you a new Gather next week.  There is much more to do (two more releases are already in the works!), but we are excited to take this big step forward.  We are particularly grateful to the thousands of you who helped determine what we should build, tested alternative designs, and then helped refine the best of those tested.  Together, we are building a better Gather, step-by-step.  Thanks for everything you are doing.