August 24th Chat with CEO with Tom Gerace

Welcome everyone! Great things are afoot here at Gather. We have announced the winners of the July Amazon Shorts Writing Contest, launched an Education Series sponsored by Encyclopaedia Britannica, and have plans in the works for actual Gatherings, where we will be bringing our online community together in offline environments. As always, I look forward to hearing your thoughts on everything we've done so far and your ideas about the future of Gather. With that said, let's chat!

Hi, and thanks. Glad to see the education series, but not so glad to see the bzzzzing going on. May I ask if the freebie articles, which are copies of links from other sites, are considered 'articles' the same as original content?

Let me start out with a question for all of you for a change! We have noticed recently that five or six of us are on the road at any given time (myself, our editor in chief, David Cooperstein, our president, Carl Rosendorf, our CFO, Susan Maffei). In fact we visit cities all across America.

We thought it might be fun to have a Gathering in each city at a local Starbucks or pub as we wander the country, just to let everyone local get to know each other.

If we build it, will you come?

Sounds great, and yes, I would come.

Tom,
There is nothing better than face-to-face when building something. Yes, I'd come.

Sandy-

From proud to worried in just one day?

Broadly, we are preparing to launch a new version of our flagging system that lets members identify "overtly commercial" and "incomplete/partial" content. These things violate our TOS and would be removed.

That may deal with the problem you cite. If not, can you show me an example or two of the content you find distasteful?

Thanks!

Tom, about the issues that Gather has periodically: is it possible to let the Gather community know BEFORE you do a fix that there might be a slowdown - that way, we can at least know, in advance, of what might be in store.

Johnny looked at cleavage yesterday - worried me.

Excellent! First round of grande non-fat lattes with one splenda and extra foam are on me!

Speaking for myself in Boston, I'm sure quite a few of us 'locals' would definintely COME!

better define 'on me'.. we like double entenre around here ;-)

Tom: A gather meeting would be cool, although doesn't seem to be many active members in my area as far as I can tell.

Sandy: I don't know if all the freebie stuff can be blamed on the bzzing. I'm a bit ashamed that my my read article is on freebies. It's an interest of mine, but I agree that the links people are posting can easily be found elsewhere.

How is the ad campaign going ? Is Gather getting recognition from the ads ?

and creative spelling

Kathryn- Yes we are going to launch a Gatherland Warning System thats you know when we know we have a problem and are working on it. I am not sure we are going to color-code it however. Our member services team joins you in this suggestion and we are working to make it happen ASAP.

Bulletins would appear on your MyGather page, or on the homepage if there were issues preventing log-in.

Sure Tom.. a Gather gathering would be great!

Unconfirmed rumor about Johnny looking at cleavage, and I am working on finding an appropriately bulky sweater.

(Lyrical has it ready to mail, Kelly)

Candida- Thanks! We are really excited to have the education group live. Gather has a growing number of educators on the site and thousands of parents who care deeply about the topic. We look forward to an ongoing conversation there about the good in our educational system today, opportunities for innovation (like adding education to multi-player games), and opportunities for improvement.

Good to know, Tom, about the Gatherland warning system. Thanks.

George- we are having good early results from the campaign. It actually goes live on television (it has been running just on pre-roll video online to date) just after Labor Day. Stay tuned for more!

I have a question. Will our groups ever be alphabetized or organized? At least on our publishing pages.

Any thoughts about refining the people search to include tags within it? If I wanted to find cat lovers in Iowa, I couldn't do that right now.. I'd have to find either cat lovers or people in Iowa.

Ditto the alphabetizing request ... or at least let us organize them "somehow".

Kelly- I think that the community discussing free offers is a reasonable use of the site, tagged properly or located in a group dedicated to those offers (which is how I have seen it so far). People just publishing offers as spam, tagging them with "politics" or "poetry" would obviously violate our TOS.

Actually, a while ago someone suggested (Monica perhaps?) that we create Gather Shopping space, using our community buying power to negotiate special deals for Gather members. Would that be of interest to people?

To answer your question, Tom- yes, I would come visit if you build something foamy and friendly!

Personally, I would appreciate a shopping area completely separate from the real content. I find the twenty or more 'articles' about free guitar picks annoying.

Sandy- groups search and better groups organization is a high priority as well. We have thousands of groups on the site (more than 3,000 if you count all the public and private ones together) and they are growing daily. Helping people find the right groups for them is a key focus for us.

(note, that should be things LIKE guitar picks, they aren't all offers for guitar picks)

Amy- we are going to add a people search function to the site that lets you find people more easily, whether they are your friends, people who share your interests, or people in your area.

I will also suggest that the team look at different ways of sorting/displaying your contacts. Thanks for the suggestion!

As new members continue to sigh up, how are their demographics breaking down ? I'm guessing most of them just read rather than post articles. Do you have any feel for what kind of articles the new people signing up like ?

I disagree with Sandy. I visit Gather for one reason and one reason only: free guitar picks. I demand that all posts on Gather--articles, images, and comments--deal exclusively with free guitar picks. Furthermore, anyone who breaks this rule should be banned and be forced to pay for his guitar picks.

A shopping space would be cool. I belong to other online communities that are able to negotiate deals and offer special coupon codes.

There are also sites that go the affiliate program route and make money from their members' buying power. That may be an income opportunity you want to explore.

Welcome, Lynn! Searching users by tag and content will be part of our user search. Thanks for asking.

Also, we are discussing allowing members to change what is featured on their own pages (like groups can today). This would let you list the articles, groups, and friends that you choose to on your namespace (e.g. tom.gather.com). Would you use this feature if we launched it?

(Johnny, your tux awaits you over on the guitar pick article)

Candida and Amy- very kind words, thanks!

I would definitely like to re-arrange content as I change my use of it.. flexibility would be great!

Tom,
We are on the west coast, in N.W. Oregon to be precise. Will your travels bring you out this way? That would be very nice if you could say stop in Portland or possibly Astoria on the coast!

I have suggestions that I think would make gather easier to navigate, where do you post suggestions on gather?

R.B.

I would use that feature, Tom. Sounds good.

I've got tons of guitar picks that are so worn out they're round; anybody want any ?

Sandy, a separate area or content type for shopping might make good sense. Let me noodle it for a little while and come back with a few questions.

We have been debating the same question for journal or diary entries. Should we encourage them to be posted here (they could be, as articles, of course). If so, should we have them as a separate content type so that people can find them when they want them, but focus on discussion of public topics otherwise. Any thoughts?

I agree about journal and diary entries, also!

Cross referencing all content would be good (sounds like you're going to need librarians on board!) even if they are "housed" in separate areas.

One great thing about Gather is that we are all permitted to have our own opinions, so my question is this.
Will there be set into place some type of guidelines that limit one Gather Member from writing articles explicitly to demean other Gather members? Example: One party writes an article with slanderous or malicious content, and uses the exact same tags as the original members tags. This would be to make sure their article was on the same search page, as to diminish the first person's article.

Maybe if we could categorize: poetry, essay, political article, journal entry, fun topic, etc...

Tom, I notice that in the image accompanying this article, an exclamation point is represented by a tie. I would like to see a change implemented in Gather wherein all punctuation marks are replaced with cartoon articles of clothing.

George- new members typically take baby steps when they join. They might fill out their profiles, then read for a while. After a bit, they comment, then read for a while. Perhaps one of their comments elicit a response, and they engage in a conversation. And then once they have engaged other members, we see them starting to publish. It's an evolution.

The best way to keep track of the community's focus is looking at the "most read" and "most published" tag pages (under the tags tab, above). Sustainability and education are big climbers for us lately. Poetry, fiction, and food remain strong. Interestingly, "people" seems to always be near the top of the list.

I am also up for face to face time with fellow Gatherers. I would also appreciate the notification of updates. I definitely would like to have my groups and people alphabetized.
Also, sometimes when I want to post to a group I may forget what types of articles are appropriate. It would be nice to have some way to pop up a brief description of the group from the page where I choose which groups to publish to. That way I won't be in danger of getting fussed at for inappropriate posting. It doesn't happen often but I don't want to send something to a group that isn't appropriate. With a variety of groups it would be nice to be able to manage my list. Alphabetize, group according to type (i.e. put all poetry groups in one spot and social groups in another).
I miss the part of the old page where new articles were listed as they posted. It was my way of checking out new folks.
Also, now and then when I am going through the list of articles that my people have posted my "next" icon does not work unless I reboot my computer. Is that a Gather problem or a "my computer" problem?

I think a lot of the problem is that everything is grouped under the heading "Article." Many different things could qualify as an article (i.e. poetry, fiction, a discussion topic, free guitar picks). But when I click on the article tab everything comes up, and a lot of good stuff I'd like to read gets buried under a lot of the freebie links and three line posts.

In considering Number 1 Mom's concern about slanderous articles, I believe that Gather should create a category specifically for slander.

How many Gather points do you think Tom is collecting now for this chat? I call shennanigans! (I keed)

love the Gather. keep up the good work.

J5K - perhaps Gather-branded guitar picks would be best of all?

Kelly - my first business, Be Free, was in the affiliate marketing space. I know it well. That's an alternative we are considering, too, as a way to bring value back to the community. Are their sites you like best using the affiliate model to drive community value?

Gather branded guitar picks makes sense. I'm not sure the others do. What a compromise!

Richard- I love the Portland area! I have been in Seattle a few times and it's a short hop from there. I will see if we can make something work on my next trip out. If you know good potential Gather advertisers or sponsors in the region, shoot me a note and I will see if I can earn us all a little more money on the way!

They are putting up the Starbucks Billboard near I-4 It is an easy bike ride and not a bad walkand I-75 interchange. It may be at exit 10 east I-4 to Orlando abot 11 miles east of downtown Tampa. Going east on I-4 and "getting off" at exit ten go to the truckstop on the left just past where the tourists go at that other place. There is a buffet restaurant there very reasonable and very high quality but on fridays they put out steak and charge more. This exit has historicaly been a "connection' point for "dealers" and this area commonly has hit and runs and police chases and everything that goes with methamphetamine/cocaine hell. The forward moving persons are fighting back equal to the level of their awareness and ability. I will bring you an autographed baseball in exchange for coffee/tea. Uncle Tom, we love You with the length, width, and breadth of our hearts!

Are you actively recruiting non-profit groups? What are you offering them to establish a prescence?

If you issue Gather guitar picks, make sure you offer them in all gauges, especially Heavy and Extra Heavy.

Let's see, a guitar pick, a latte and the tee. Who could ask for more:)

You have to have a totebag. It's the law

I haven't read all the comments so maybe you've covered this.

Let me be blunt: Why in the hell can't you guys get the servers or the software (or whatever) fixed to make it less crash prone and quicker to page load?

I know for a fact that I spend less time on Gather (and both publish and read less) than I used to because I am just plain sick of the slow speeds.

It's bad enough that the whole concept is basically a time waster but to make it even worse with crashes and painfully, painfully slow page loads really makes a person (me, at least) think -- while staring at a frozen monitor -- why in the hell am I bothering with this?

I would think that sort of reaction is bad for business.

I'd love to hear your response on this, Tom. Thanks.

Lynn- Great point on cross-referencing! We use tags to allow cross-referencing across content types. If you go to gather.com/politics, you see articles and images on politics as well as groups and people focused on politics. If we added other content types (journals/shopping or product reviews/audio/video) we will have the same cross-referencing in place there. That way, you can explore Gather by topic, by content type, by author, or by group. Already, you can explore starting with editor's picks or community picks.

(please send Kelly an extra large tee, high collar)

Well that is one thing for sure that is needed...
#1.A suggestion form, as well as being able to contact the powers that be from our own e-mail address
#2. an edit button in comments
#3. a number system to navigate the comments pages.

And speaking as a newcomer, how are we (newcomers) supposed to find people to invite or groups we want to join if we are limited to just one page to choose from?
R.B.

I guess I could see something like the Squidoo model being used here, but I really don't like Squidoo.

I see the most value for both sides in the sites mentioned in my article here: Cash back for shopping online, ebay

But this would ideally be a separate area of the site, and perhaps tied into store and product reviews by members.

Tom, concerning the question of slanderous articles. I understand the principle of free speech on Gather, but I also looked up the TOS regarding appropriate conduct:

The TOS states Gather members may not:

" defame, abuse, harass, stalk, threaten or otherwise violate the legal rights (such as rights of privacy and publicity) of others;

post any inappropriate, defamatory, infringing, obscene, libelous or unlawful Content; "

I guess I'm unclear as to how these slanderous articles are not considered to defame members about whom they are writing.

would you have to have fame in order to be 'defamed'?

Ahhh...I can't keep up. We need a chat room. Come to Canada anytime. Keep blogging in blogging. Shopping in shopping. Do what Gather does best...articles.

3000 groups! No wonder they're not all listed.

Do you have a policy about multiple ID's for one person on Gather?

Where would I find these TOS? (I know I should know.)

Hello.

There you go... my point EXACTLY!

This thread is very disturbing.

From a quick read it looks like Gather is holding a party where (a) everyone will be drinking "grande non-fat lattes with one splenda and extra foam", and (b) Kelly will be wearing a bulky sweatshirt.

At least one of those ideas is really lame.

Number 1 Mom- There is tension between two key Gather goals. On one side, we want to build a thriving community that we enjoy and where we learn, express ourselves, connect, and grow. On the other hand, one person's freedom of expression may allow them to create content that upsets another person.

Articles that demean or defame don't build the community. That said, there is a place for satire in our world and it's hard, sometimes, to tell the difference.

We are planning to work with the community to build a list of "acceptable" community behaviors. Those that are not acceptable will be added to our upgraded "reporting" system ("Report this article for ad hominem attacks" or "Report this article for offensive language").

In most cases, we will let users, by default, choose to ignore content that has been flagged for one of these reasons. If you don't mind offensive language, for example, (or even love hearing it), you could choose to see it.

This allows free speech, while helping people to see only the content they want to see. We think it strikes a good balance.

Of course, if there is content that threatens violence against a person or class of people, or stands in violation of our TOS, we will still reserve the right to take direct action to protect the Gather community.

(and I would buy a tee shirt, tote bag, and mother-of-the bride dress)

We really need a chatroom to do this in.

Google's directory would help :)

I know if I go to "politics" I get "everything"... but the problem is overload and no organization to it. Some kind of structure or sort options is needed. As it is, I get about 4 selections, and then I have to page through tons of content, so I miss a lot just because I am not going through 40 pages to happen to find one article.

Is sound and video still planned and, if so how far away are they ?

Sandy: You are too funny!

I would use my points to purchase a Gather T-shirt or other merchandise, and that would be great promotion for you. Some guy on another thread said I was a "stone cold fox" and should model for Gather. Although, I think he was being sarcastic as his profile stated that he was a conservative.

I nominate Kelly to model the sweatshirts!

I just wanted to add my two cents; I don't like the idea of editing anyone's comments out of a thread. Although before posting a comment, it would be nice to have a spell check...but that isn't a high priority.

I'm with Kelly... although I am but a mere 3 days old here, I would gladly trade some pouints for a t-shirt... or tote... or fleece... and hey what about baseball caps?


OuttaControlDoc

I've solved the slander problem, everyone!

Come on and join Slanderpalooza!

I often want to edit my comments. I tend to type first, and then I'll notice misspellings and grammar mistakes that bug me. But I can see how this could be abused.

Julie B- Great question, and one we think a lot about. First, Gather is growing quickly on both the member side and the revenue side. In the first six months of our launch, viral growth was happening, but off a small base. We were too small in the spring to attract significant advertiser attention.

What a difference a quarter makes! Hundreds of people now sign-up for Gather every day. We have well below 1% attrition (member loss) rate. Hundreds of thousands of people read your content each month. According to Alexa, Gather has climbed 3,100 spots in the last 3 months, from the 12,000th most trafficked site online to 8,434 (on a 3 month running average). We are now trending between 6,000 and 7,000 on a typical week so the growth continues.

The devil is, of course, in the details. We are actually in the process of defining new metrics right now, differentiating "registered users" from "active users" and within "active users" separating "publishers" from "browsers." Once we have some better metrics (and once we have audited them to be sure they are accurate), we will start to share them with the community. I'll keep you posted on the public information as well.

They are, after all, your stats!

Thanks, Candida :)

I too would trade just about anything for fleece :) How about a nice blanket or throw with Gather logo on it so I can fall asleep in front of the TV in style? :D

Thank you Tom great explanation. Here is one more question then. Where would the article to demean another member using the exact same keywords fit into the code on the TOS?

Is the Amazon Short Story Competition a signal of a growing relationship between Amazon and Gather? Is it far fetched to imagine Gatherers redeeming their points to purchase items available of Amazon? Also, has the response to the said contest met or exceeding your expectations? Another quick question: Will we be able to purchase Music with our Gather points someday? Cruises, books, and so on are good, but Music would be awesome.

Tom, how many members does Gather have?

tom - great conversation! i'd love to meet other gatherers. :) great idea!!

i have two problems:
1) when finishing an article, and clicking PUBLISH, i often get to the create an article page again - everything lost. ben suggested refreshing the page, but that never helps. what a huge waste of time and energy.

2) i can't see my connections on a page and choose to get email alerts or not. it is really really annoying.

i love gather! thanks to you all for your hard work - it is greatly appreciated!!

Thank you all for your great questions, thoughts, and suggestions. Unfortunately, Tom has a hard stop at 1pm. However, all outstanding comments and questions will be addressed later at improve.gather.com. Once again, thanks for your participation!

i agree w/ charles.. i want to buy tunes

a) This would definately work better in a chatroom b) I was on at 12 and had no realization that tom was gonna be chatting at Noon.... earlier notification please c) If gather doesn't want blogs, journals, essays, or slander.. isn't that restricting our first amendment?>>> HMMMM?

Jake- Thanks for being blunt. I am big into direct, honest, respectful communication.

If you are unhappy, we are unhappy. And we know that we have had a problem here. We do a lot to avoid these problems (testing, including load testing, prior to launch). The challenge is, of course, nothing runs in a test environment like it runs in production.

When Gather launches new software and servers, we need to "tune" them, much like people used to tune their cars regularly. Since we are rapidly building and deploying new software, we have had more frequent issues with tiny bugs that slow things down or tuning that we have had to do in our production environment. This has led to too frequent slowdowns in recent months.

To fix this problem, we are taking a number of steps:
1) We are significantly increasing the size of our data center so that we should be able to "throw hardware at a problem" more easily, making them less apparant to the community.

2) We are adding talent to our ops team that has significant experience "tuning" and monitoring server farms.

3) We are changing our deployment process so that we can, most of the time, launch a new release into the field, observe it, and (if necessary) roll-back the release if we notice a problem.

All of these things will let us deliver better Gather performance as we go forward. Apologies for the occasional hiccup in the meantime.

We get in the golf course ponds alot down here to fight gators for golf balls. Collectors actively seek out "Logo" balls. The higher the skill and ambition of a sportsfanatic, the smaller tjeir balls so why not "gather Logo" golfballs? Oh yeah Uncle Tom. I also have a basketball, a soccer ball, a tennis ball. and an official pro football if you would like any for your acquaintances, and maybe sum other stuff. If George comes down here with a band or sumthin, I do not use guitar picks but do not turn down appreciated gifts of love. Gather guitar picks sound kool. Gather rainbow-colorred tees sound gud too. Later!

Also, i used to be able to look up a specific tag and see how many times it was read in a day, week, month. That option is no longer available, and I'm unable to easily gauge how much people have read a particular article. Can an option be created or reinstated to allow this type of information to be viewed?

Team- as our editors suggest, I need to run for a bit for a number of meetings. I will come back to answer all of the open questions above (and try to sort out whether we should make Gather branded wedding-dresses) later today and tomorrow.

Thanks for taking the time to stop by! Happy Gathering!

Nice Address!!

Hi- I'm a gather newbie. Yes, I ended up here through a bzzz campaign. I had a myspace account but I never really used it much. I feel that gather is much more mature. I don't really need to find that guy i went to high school with in 1988.

I love bargain hunting so I like the freebie stuff. But I'm also a student teacher and trying to start a forum for others like me. I also set up a family private site. I've joined several groups and tried to connect with gather members who share my interest - so far few responses. I also love politics.

While I share all these interests I agree with the sentiments of the others that the articles should somehow be separate. I also question whether people have been gatherers for a while really want newbies around.

Hi there; I've been on Gather for about two weeks, and I've been taking notes as I poke around here, thinking I'd publish a short article outlining some things that bug me. Instead, I'll drop them in here and hope you have a chance to address them.

- Please make "remember me" actually remember me! I should never have to log back in. See Flickr; once I log in there, I'm logged in on that computer until I choose to log out.

- Sounds like you're working on group organization and search; my biggest request would be better search (advanced search?) for groups.

- Interestingly, searching for the tag "gather" takes you to the main Gather page instead of to articles tagged with "gather". I did see "gathercom" as a tag, but your average newbie won't know this.

- There needs to be a better way to track threads you've participated in. I love other sites' "subscribe to this thread" feature; one I visit a lot is WetCanvas.com, which has great subscription options. Surely something Gather could work on.

- In that vein, why no RSS feeds? Or are they there but hidden? Come on, folks, everyone has RSS now.

- Also ala Flickr, I'd like to quickly see who counts me as a contact, and who my contacts are. List view would be nice; those big icons are too big.

- I can understand not having an edit option on comments, and I don't mind that, but it's ridiculous not to have a preview.

- I see a strange effect when a group has custom banners; the two rows of buttons (My Gather/Articles/etc.) overlap. Using Firefox on a Mac.

- I'd like the ability to block users, so that their articles don't show up in any recent articles list. This would help me not see the people who post nothing but freebie stuff. Personally, I could care less about freebies, and my shopping needs are met elsewhere online.

- Comments to a thread should have a permalink option, so they can be referred to elsewhere. Pretty basic feature that most sites have.

- I'd like to be able to mark articles as "read" so I don't keep seeing them in recent article lists.

- Let me customize my "My Gather" page. Flexibility is key here!

- Finally, please fix the problem that people are seeing when they go to publish an article and the whole thing disappears. So frustrating, until you learn that you have to copy and paste from elsewhere. It shouldn't be necessary.

I'm sorry this is so long; maybe I should post it as an article. But I had high hopes for Gather, and I'd like to see it work on usability. Most of the features I've asked for here are very basic to forum websites, and it's a little surprising to me that Gather has overlooked these basics. It has a lot to offer, so I hope the team continues to make improvements. Thanks for your work so far!

Tom – Very interesting conversation here. As a CEO you are setting a good precedent for interacting with the members directly.

For easy navigating hundreds of pages deep lists of articles, comments etc. there is a need to add one more button [go to page] in addition to the already existing [first page] [previous] and [next] buttons.