Dear fellow Gatherers:
I'm excited to announce the launch of a new Gather experience at gather.com. With your help, we've created a fantastic new platform for the growing Gather community. You'll still find the same great people and content. We've just made it easier to connect, discuss, and explore. And I'll be live on the site today at improve.gather.com from 1pm to 2pm (ET) to field your questions.
The new gather.com, named for the minimalist artist Carl André, was truly a product of the Gather community. We talked with our most active members on improve.gather.com. (Please join us to chat about future releases.) We surveyed over 1,000 of you. We interviewed members. We interviewed non-Gatherers in our demographic to understand their initial impressions of the site. And we tested various versions of the release with these groups. Finally, several of you were involved with online testing to make sure key tasks were easier to complete.
To help introduce the new gather.com experience, we've created a video tour. You can see a brief introduction here and explore individual features below. In these videos, you'll see how the Carl André 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 Gather. Our new homepage at gather.com focuses on content our editors think is particularly interesting to the community. We'll call out not just an article, but a conversation between members to help others understand the quality of the dialog. The Editorial Team will also feature groups, members, and images. watch the video
2) Personalized: Each of you can now visit my.gather.com when logged-in to see your Gather world at a glance. On My Gather, you'll be notified if you have new mail, pending connections, and pending group invitations. You'll also be able to see new articles and images published by your friends, family, and colleagues, as well as by your subscriptions. The recent activity of your groups and connections is also right here at your fingertips. watch the video
3) Customized: Every Gather member has a namespace -- a place that contains everything you've contributed to the site, plus additional information about you. Your namespace is located at username.gather.com; mine's tom.gather.com. To promote your Gather brand, include this URL at the bottom of emails and on web pages you publish -- even on business cards. Your namespace contains your articles, images, comments, connections, subscriptions, and groups -- plus your personal profile; make sure to refresh it from time to time to keep others up-to-date with your interests. watch the video
4) Easier to explore: Gather now calls out member content in more compelling ways. We allow you to see new content site-wide and on tag pages. This allows "sampling" of people on Gather who haven't yet established audiences. Plus, we've broadened opportunities to be seen by creating more obvious tag navigation, allowing people to more easily connect with others who share their interests. Tags are also easier to understand. You can find a default list of tags that provides a sample of the breadth of content on Gather. Additionally, each tag page (e.g., gather.com/food) features a list of related tags, groups, authors, and content. watch the video
5) Better for groups: Gather Groups(SM) take a big step forward, as well. First, groups have much more significant branding. See, for example, http://food.gather.com or http://photo.gather.com. Your group can now develop its own look and feel, establishing an identity on Gather or bringing an off-line identity to the site. Second, members can navigate within the groupspace, seeing members, articles, and images all in one place. Third, groups are easy to find. By placing them more prominently on tag pages, members will be able to quickly locate the ones that interest them. watch the video
6) Easier to navigate: We've made several changes to Gather's navigation to help you find the content you want more easily. We've added a menu bar and submenus that let you find articles, images, comments, people, and groups in just a click or two. watch the video
7) 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. watch the video
We hope you're as excited about the new gather.com as we all are at the company. Again, we're particularly grateful to the thousands of you who tested alternative designs, helped determine what we should build, and then refined the best of those tested. Together, we're building a better Gather, step-by-step. Thanks for everything you do to contribute to this vibrant community.
Best regards,
Tom Gerace
Founder & CEO
gather.com
tom.gather.com
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Comments: 13
Rather than just heading to the one group I was invited to and not really going anywhere else on the site.
and of course KEO is the first one to comment on this page-- always ready to lap up the points albeit now headless. you ought to geiver a 100 extra points for being on the page. will make her day, no doubt.
ask us how we feel after the intial frustration wears off, but really it's awful not to have the left sidebar with the windows out to the world and the image thumbnails to hop around on--
and not so easy to navigate.
and orange is definitely not our favorite color, however nice on persimmons, squash, mashed carrots and pumpkins as well as old skoda cars
You guys are working on the load times right? Also, I'm not sure if other people are having this problem but my navigation on the top doesn't always work.
PERSONALIZATION.
I want to make my Gather page MY Gather page. That means, when people go to feelgoodgirl.gather.com they see what *I* want to be shown there. I want options on designing the page, how many articles are there, and whether or not my comments are shown. I'd like to be able to categorize my own articles like a blog so people could see what different types of articles I write and look at what they are intersted in.
MySpace allows members to customize their pages - though, please don't follow their lead in terms of design, since it's crappy and the amount of bad background images is enough to keep me off that site.
But there seems to be a huge reluctance on the part of Gather to touch that awful "B" word - otherwise known as BLOG.
I'd like to customize my Gather page so that is is a "blog." If you can get that set up, where people can create their own "blog" pages here, and keep the community aspects going, THEN I think you'll have something.
This is my biggest disappointment in this latest release.