I would like to start by thanking you for joining me today. As always, I look forward to the great dialogue and thoughtful input these live chats generate. Our latest release, Guthrie, brings you improved privacy controls on your profile; the ability to group your connections into "friend sets"; a simplified registration process and a "Getting Started Guide" for new members; and a Gather Help Desk run by our Support team who will be on hand to answer your questions. These are very exciting changes and great steps in making your Gather experience more relevant to you, your friends, and your family.
For those who are joining this chat for the first time and even for those who are returning to let me, and the entire Gather team, know your thoughts. I encourage you to voice your opinions about everything Gather. I will be here for the next hour to listen and respond to your thoughts and ideas in the comment section below—so let's get started.
All the best,
Tom Gerace, CEO
gather.com
tom.gather.com
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Comments: 174
anything that is posted on the Internet is fair game. Disabling right-click menus, which some seem to be promoting does NOTHING toward solving the problem, and has a serious cost in terms of usability - and results in people who have no patience for being inconvenienced and treated like thieves (like me) leaving - for no benefit whatsoever because it is SO easily overcome.
I was looking at Gather's stats recently (at the place that you use to publish stats for advertisers) and noticed that the fourth most popular subdomain on Gather is http://spanishpoemas.gather.com/ which I found fascinating. Not what I would have expected. Care to posit a theory as to why this is so popular?
If you aren't receiving notifications you think you should be, please let our member services team know and we will take a look with you.
The number of points we are distributing has not decreased. We regularly update the algorithms used to distribute points, so that might change individual user experiences, but points continue to be awarded at a healthy rate.
a) The ability to see both our current dollar amount in earnings (in whole dollars) and the corresponding value of those dollars in points (eg, the display would say '$2 / 145 Gather points), or
b) The ability to see our current earnings in dollars and cents (eg, the display would say '$2.23' or what have you).
As you know, dollars move very, very slowly, so it would be nice to have a way to gauge how we're doing. Is something like this possible? If not, why is that?
I like this feature a lot too, honestly, because I have a few friends who are public figures and don't always feel at liberty to share candid thoughts on a number of topics. With the new friend sets, we are able to have the kind of private conversation we might have in a restaurant or coffee shop, sharing ideas or life experiences among ourselves.
I'll suggest to the team that we add cents to the equation (which is probably easier than adding some points breakdown as that might confuse people). I'm grateful for the suggestion.
Thank you for this opportunity to speak with you and ask you about Guthrie. (love all the Woody and Arlo , btw.
I noticed that in trying to invite my connections to my groups that only the most recent 50 friends are showing. Can we have more? I invite lumps of people from time to time.
Also, I would like to have more than the current offering of only 500 friends available on the email notifications. There is only ONE place currently where I can VIEW ALL of my connections - that is on my Gather mail list.
My list of 500 friends on my email notifications choosing page only goes up to the letter A. In order for me to find other friends to choose the email notifications, the ONLY place I can go to is my Gather email list.
if I go to MY PEOPLE, I can only see them by recent sign in or other - not by order of most recent, for example, as was previously the case.
Also, it is very difficult to find people using the current options. I appreciate having the member's username available when we connect to them.
But when trying to find someone using search articles, it is very difficult because the search engine returns articles not people.
For example, If I am looking for Jane Doe, (because I don't remember what her username is and I don't know if I am connected or where to find her) I type in Jane Doe in the search articles box and it returns all values with Jane AND Doe in the title and in the articles but not Jane Doe, per se.
Will the FIND PEOPLE option return?
Also, I would like greater options - more people - in our email notifications and also in our inviting members to our groups. I've had some emails with Support about some of this.
Thank you. I will be back after you have signed off.
Video loading should not have taken nearly that long! I am sorry you had a bad experience. I'll ask Maryanne to get in touch so that we can learn a bit more from you. Our loading should perform similarly to Youtube or other sites.
1) How long do they have to show that they've been "educated"?
2) What do they have to do to prove this (remove all other stolen images from their site, I would hope, in addition to apologizing to any Gather members who may have been included in their victim list)?
3) What is the theory behind REWARDING known thieves before any rehabilitation is demonstrated (as happened this weekend when someone caught red-handed last week spent the weekend as one of the featured members on Gather's homepage)?
I will leave the image protection issue to others who, I am sure, will be chiming in soon, if they are not already doing so as I type.
There seems to be a rash of image and text theft lately...
Jim Bostick said: "I see a few of you seem disappointed to learn that the subscribe option will be removed in the future. We understand what your goals are with subscriptions and you will still be able to accomplish those goals."
Does this mean that even though you are removing subscriptions, I will still be able to follow the work of Gather members without connecting (I mean becoming "friends") with them? That there will be a similar feature that will allow me to:
--"test drive" a possible new connection/friend before initiating or accepting a connection/friend request? I liked the subscription option because it allowed me to see exactly how much a potential new connection/friend would impact my "My Gather" experience (ie. would they dominate the comments and articles for me or not? Is their content and commentary of interest to me for the long haul?)
--watch for articles and comments by specific folks without having to become their "friends" (or forcing them to become mine)? I subscribe to you (Jim), Tom and MaryAnne to keep up with what's new or going on with the site. Will I still be able to do this without becoming your friend (not that there's anything wrong with that...) or bookmarking your namespaces and remembering to check for new stuff periodically?
If that's not the case, Tom, will you be my friend?
Additionally, re: Guthrie--At first I thought I'd have no use for "friends sets" (I hate the new "friends" vs. "connections" term, by the way--in some cases, it's more of a commitment than I want to make, and I've only got 55 of them...), until someone from Support informed us that we'd be able to customize our My Gather pages to only show the articles, comments and images of specific "friends sets". I am *thrilled* that we will have this capability to customize our My Gather page in the future. Thanks.
Other than the new terminology (and some initial confusion over setting up friends sets (why are ALL My Friends/connections called "All Friends" in one place and "My Friends" an inch away?), my only gripe is that the "Most Read" articles list (the only "Most List" worth looking at) still remains horribly inaccurate (with articles from 2005?!).
Gather gives you a lot of control over what emails you receive. Our new release helps members to set email preferences when they register for new accounts and connect with new friends.
If you have been a member for a while (and are connected to a lot of people or a member of lots of groups already), you might be receiving more mail than you would like. You can change your email settings bu clicking on the "my account" link on the top right of your screen. After you click that link, select "Email Preferences" near the top of that page. There, you will see the option to turn on or off the email you receive from Gather.
and Vicky -- great, great idea about the chat rooms, both public and private!
I still am waiting for an answer on the stealing, It is much more important then anything going right now. And will decided if I stay at Gather or not as with alot of people, some who have left already.
I came here today to see if anything was going to be done regarding copyright issues that others have already addressed.
I have seen the cookie cutter comment that has been sent to members who have reported image abuse on this site and I have to tell you it makes Gather appear to have no integrity at all.
It all comes back to the big question What Would You Do? You know about it, you see it, are you going to be one more person that stands by and watches.
Very disappointing.
Ang- We have considered letting members simply use points to buy cash payments periodically (in, say, $20 or $50 increments). That way, you could keep points as points, but convert them to cash when you wanted. What would you think of that kind of system?
People is what made this site right? Now you let them down and what should they do?? What would you do Tom?
I love this idea.
Ok, let me hit them from the top:
1) On Group Invitation Limits: I am not sure why group invites are limited to 50 people, other than the desire to prevent massive group spam. I will inquire and see if someone from our product team might answer here as well.
2) On Email Settings Limits: There are some practical limitations to how many setting can be changed in a database at one time. 500 people X 5 settings = 2,500 potential settings to be changed. We are currently testing system performance at 500 people. If things look reasonable for a few weeks, we will try to extend that in gradual steps to make this easier.
3) You can still search people at the very top of the Gather page. Pull down the menu that reads "search articles" and beneath that you will see an option for "search people." from that page, you can also access "Advanced Search" which will give you more choices.
Did that answer your question on find people?
I will ask our support team for your feedback on additional notifications as well.
Thanks!
The "Subscription" option works for me when I have other Gather member whose articles and/or images I'm interested in, but they're not necessarily interested in mine. It is a way to have their contributions show up in my "Articles for me" and "Images for me" section without burdening them with mine occupying space in theirs.
When the subscription feature eventually gets eliminated, is there going to be some way to select which "friends" get their content shown and which don't? Or, even better, having the ability to separately select "Articles", "Images" and/or "Video"?
Sad I liked it here.
I am playing catch up, but if it hasn't been asked, I would like the option of grouping our groups into sections like we do our friends !! Any chance?
Also, any chance of new kinds of gift cards or a promotion in the near future? Just curious!
Why can you not come up with a form to block an individual(s) from commenting or rating content if they are all ready blocked from sending emails? I would think that this would be easy to incooperate in the software. If I have them blocked from sending me email, then I don't want them rating or commenting on my stuff either. Yes, I could just publish things for my "friends" to see, but possible "new friends" wouldn't be able to see them then.
My e-mail notifications work. For now.
As far as copyright, not getting into it. But I do not want to have to post AWFUL pics just so one will not want them. that sucks!
I just tried it and got 5 articles.
Chats would make things easier when participating in discussions like this. Following and participating in the conversation as things are is a bit of a pain.
But I'm far more interested in the copyright topic and await the answer on that.
First, under our Terms of Service, you maintain ownership of your own content when you post it here on Gather. That means that your rights under US and international copyright laws and treaties apply to original works shared here.
There are a number of things we have done to protect your work already:
- We make clear in our TOS that you own your work and that members may not copy or redistribute your work without your permission.
- We create a "time stamp" on your content, showing when you posted it. This helps you demonstrate "first use" online, documenting when you shared your work so that you can show that you posted it before others if it is misused.
- We enforce our TOS, removing stolen content from Gather when we receive a notice from someone who owns a copyright that someone else is misusing their content.
- We remove members from the site that repeatedly use stolen content. (Moh- the first time we see a violation, we remove the content and educate the member. The second time, we remove the content and give a "last chance" warning. The third time, we close the account).
- We allow you to share content with only your friends (or just certain of your friends), letting you share your work with just people you trust.
We do not intentionally reward people who use others' content through features or any other means. I hope you all know our team better than that. We are human, though, and can't verify ownership of everything shared here. Sometimes, that means we make mistakes.
There are other alternatives for enhanced protection that we are examining:
- Adding "watermark" technology to the site to let you mark photos you post
- Adding technologies that look for similar images/videos/songs to ones posted
- Adding inhibitors (like attempting to disable right clicks in browsers) that make it harder for the less technically sophisticated users to download content. Note that these techniques do not prevent copying entirely as the savvy technologist can usually capture nearly anything that is sent downstream to her computer.
We would love suggestions and examples where you see others doing a better job. We want people to share here. One way that we encourage that sharing is by letting you share what you want with whom you want. Another way is to make Gather an increasingly safe place to share your work.