Welcome to this month's Ask the CEO chat!
With autumn comes change - leaves, temperature, and even Gather. This fall has already brought new changes and features to our vibrant online community, and there are many more on the way. I want to personally thank you for joining me this afternoon for our monthly conversation on all things Gather. Hearing what you have to say is integral in forming the Gather of tomorrow.
To join the conversation, here are some helpful tips:
1) To see new comments and keep up with the discussion, you will need to periodically refresh your screen. You may refresh your view by using the refresh button on your browser, or the F5 key on your keyboard, or through the Ctrl+R key (on Windows) or CMD+R (On Mac) key combination.
2) Once you have posted a comment to the conversation, refresh your screen (see above). Don't worry about accidental double-posting of comments, as Gather technology prevents doing so without a screen refresh between posts. This will ensure that you can more quickly "chime in" with your thoughts.
I will be here for the next hour to listen and respond to your thoughts and ideas in the comments section below.
This is your time to let me know your thoughts on Gather. Whether it is a suggestion, an idea, or just a simple hello, feel free to make your voice heard. I want you to use this time to tell me how you feel about what we've done, what we're doing, and what you would like to see us do. I am excited to hear what you're thinking!
All the best,
Tom Gerace, CEO
Gather.com
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Comments: 125
I agree with Lori on this!
Also, what is the RSS feed thing?
Keep the suggestions coming (and please be sure to post them at improve.gather.com - our forum for Gather community suggestions and feedback).
For Gather writers, the addition of RSS outbound feeds means that people across the web can keep track of your new articles easily. We will make the same technology available for groups as well.
This means your public content will be read more frequently. You can build a more loyal following of readers. And your opportunity to earn revenue from Gather will increase.
(you want me to slink away yeeeet...?)
We also want to create customized Gather gear for your own site (mine is tom.gather.com) so that you can promote your own content on Gather. Stay tuned!
That rawks hard. I will sit quietly now. Maybe. I think...
On the Gather Shop: The Gather shop can be found at http://www.cafepress.com/gatherinc - you can get some fun Gather gear there (tshirts, bumperstickers, mugs, mousepads).
On 404 pages: We had a few issues with our systems earlier this week (sorry about that!). We believe they have been resolved. Please drop me a note if you see them happening still today.
On new gift card opportunities: Two more are in the queue. We have others on the way. We focus our giftcards on merchants that support the Gather community with advertising. We have lots of new advertisers coming onto Gather every day and will have many new choices over time.
Also, I think "Ask the CEO" reminders should be posted on our pages the way you do when there will be maintainence. That way we'll know. it's just coinsedence that I saw this when I did!
First thanks for working on a "Comments for you" place for us, I could do a lot more here in the limited time my life allots me if you can find a way to do this.
And I will chime in with Tiffanie what is the Gather Shop .... so frustrating being new and knowing nothing! ,,, LOL
Can we also ask for an easier way to keep up with articles from writers we love who are not in our network (Other then subscribing) If this is in place just chalk it up to blond, old, and new hear and give me details on how to do it.
By the way Tom ---- you guys do a great job here I for one appreciate you all
I work cheap.
You may wish to allow pop-ups from Gather for that purpose. We do not allow pop-up advertising on the site, so you won't have interruption here if you choose to do that (we had a couple pop-up ads slip through from an outside vendor that we used to work with, but are aggressive in preventing that from happening).
Seems like everyone has responded really well to Mitch Albom being on the site. Any other big names we might be seeing soon?
We are happy to add any registered 501c3 charity that adds a group and recruits 100 new people to Gather to our donation options. It's our way of making sure we support the groups that help build our community.
Please help us spread the word!
It would be nice to know if they really read my stuff.
That said, our releases have occasionally been a little bumpy and we are making infrastructure changes to help reduce that impact. We are also doing a lot more member testing to help make sure new releases have a positive impact on the community.
Please contact Jim Bostick, our head of user experience, if you would like to parcticipate in testing/feedback. Jim can be found at jim.gather.com on the site, or you can just message "Jim"
Happy Friday and thanks for taking the time to answer questions!
What kind of progress has their been on NON-US Citizens/reswident aliens etc. being able to use their Gather points?
1) easier posting (including carry-over of formatting) from MS Word
2) the ability to add HTML
3) better support for the Safari browser
4) significantly improved reliability
Since the last download of Microsoft's patches, any page on Gather now generates a security warning from IE .. says "IE blocked this site from downloading files to your computer".. What is that about? What files are supposedly being downloaded?
Mark Foley's email list...
We don't allow impersonation of people on Gather to prevent members from impersonating members. Impersonation can be used for a variety of negative effects.
I understand the desire to use farce to make a statement, particularly when dealing with public figures, but it's hard to decide whom to consider a public figure and where exactly it's right to draw those lines. For now, we err on the side of keeping things above board.
Rep Foley is bogarting the coke again.
I think I have hit 2 out of 3 of your questions above. The third, related to allowing an easier way to keep track of people on the site that are not in your network, is a new one.
This is what we designed subscriptions for...is there something about the subscriptions system that you don't like? Note that we will soon allow you to get nightly or weekly emails with links to content from your people and your subscriptions in a future release if you like.
We are also launching RSS outbound as well in early November. Stay tuned for more on that front if you have an RSS reader.
I know I just got temporarily lost in the shuffle, so here I am again **big smile** original question below:
Can we also ask for an easier way to keep up with articles from writers we love who are not in our network (Other then subscribing) If this is in place just chalk it up to blond, old, and new hear and give me details on how to do it.
Tamara, some people are snobs! I'll connect with your nephew if you like :)
I enjoy Gather, but I'm a lousy speller. Could you do a spell check for comments?
If you click up top on 'articles' you can scroll through the most popular and see how many total hits you have gotten.
will Gather be running a similar elections program for 2008?
I think the site is intended for adults and adults can handle themselves... or should be able to. I do not like the idea of a block function. There are serious abuse-potential issues with that.
Because if underage children are allowed, then people are going to start whining about adult content ie language, etc... I joined this site because it promised to be for adults. My Space is for kids.
We have an ongoing author series (asktheauthor.gather.com) where we feature one author a month. We do plan to continue to bring an increasing variety of talented writers, thought leaders, elected leaders, and others on the site as Gather grows.
One Gather member, Richard Gardner, recently brought the Art Deadlines List to Gather. At artdeadlineslist.gather.com he shares "film/video festivals, art competitions, scholarships, grants, juried exhibitions, jobs & internships, call for entries/proposals/papers, writing & photo contests, design & architecture competitions, auditions, fellowships" all for the arts community. We are excited to have Richard and his group on Gather and look forward to welcoming notable artists to the site in the future, too.
Thank you Lynn!
"Rep Foley" - you aren't being ignored. I am working my way down the comments from the top and can't type fast enough!
***Bowing head in shame for not being patient*** LOLOL ,,,, okay it is decided I type way tooooo slow.
The only thing I do not like about subscriptions is that it fills up to fast for me to keep up with. I love gather (emphasis on love) but my personal time is so limited. It would not be bad if it were only one writer but when it is more than one it becomes difficult to sift through the articles.
I was thinking perhaps a link area on my gather space that would allow me to save links to a members gather page so that a list of the current articles are there to just pick from as opposed to the way subscriptions work. Does this sound logical?
Thanks Tom... these chats are always enlightening :)
I agree with you about "children" but what about those young people who didn't fit in with children because they didn't think as children?
People tried to slot me in with children all of my like (and now with people my age, in their 20s) and it didn't work. We all mature differently.
I think "mature audience" says it all, and if you're not mature enough to hand it (YOU ARE, and then some!!!!) get out of the place for mature audiences.
No. To keep the site from being flagged by business. Many folks log in from work.
And to keep the sponsors happy.
It is so nice to be back!
Categories
Allow Gather to deal with the "horrid" offenders (Like Kirby Cube)
Would prefer to see Gather return to an adult writing site (if in fact it ever was)
Everyone has their own idea of what Gather is.. some people say "It's a writing site, stick to writing and don't post anything else", some are saying "Oh this is only for adults"... if everyone got their way on exactly what Gather is then I think Gather would have alot less members and contributors. Gather is what you make it and you can make a decision to view what you want to view and ignore what you want to ignore.. why should everyone have to conform to what YOUR idea of Gather is?
Yes. There are a lot of mature kids, and some write very, very well... but parents do not do their job and kids will wander and eventually walk into a bruhaha and get slapped hard. THAT is not going to be MY responsibility.
Thanks for joining us today for another great Ask the CEO chat. Tom has to duck out to a meeting, so he will have to have a hard stop at 1pm. He will, however, come back to answer any open questions. Thanks again for contributing to the conversation - see you next time!
There are really bright, thoughtful 15, 16 and 17 year olds out there who have something to say. I would like to learn from them. There are 87 year olds who have a lot to teach. I want to learn from them too. And heck, hearing the young and old (and those of us who think of ourselves as in the middle) exchange ideas might create some of the best learning of all.
I don't know what the suggestion was but I would really really like to be able to screen out the porn w/o screening out every 4 letter word. I opened an article the other day here at work and almost fell off my chair when a saw a photo - I won't go into a description but it was disgusting --geezus crimney, if I want to see garbage like that there are a gizillion sites I can go to, I don't want to see it here!
in will reiterate, however, that if you allow your child to join Gather, then you are responsible for what kind of discussions they stumble into.
I will not stop in the middle of a heated debate to check everyone'sage before I make them look stupid and make them cry.