I am writing in response to recent member suggestions, criticisms, and requests related to our most recent release. I am grateful that many of you took the time to share your thoughts with us.
We strive to create a service that engages and meets the needs of a diverse member base. We care a great deal about member feedback and wish to be responsive to it with the products we deliver and with the support we provide. Of course, with a community of 450,000 Gatherers and growing, we cannot address every suggestion by every member individually. Instead, we seek to identify the greatest needs of the community, consider them holistically and in the context of our vision for Gather (more on that during my chat tomorrow), and then make changes to the product to meet the greatest needs of the greatest number of people.
Over the course of the last week, we have listened a lot, engaged in several conversations (see here, and here, and here), and then spent time looking at what changes we might make quickly to respond to member needs, and what additional changes we might want to consider in the future. Today, I am pleased to share these changes with you. You can expect to see most of these changes before the end of May. A few will follow in June.
Changes Coming Soon:
1) Allowing you to find the content you want and avoiding the "clutter": One of the primary requests we heard from our content-focused members was the desire to find the good content shared by friends without the "clutter" in their feeds. To help address this need we are taking three steps:We have had a number of members request that we "roll-back" to the old version of the "my.gather" page. Out of respect to those members, I thought it important to respond directly and explain that response.
We hope that this, combined with the ability to decide whom you see in your feed (by selecting which friend sets appear there by default, using the settings tab on the upper right of your feed) will allow you to find and focus on the content you like, from the people you know best on Gather easily.
- We will allow you to set your feed to show just articles (or images, or videos) and that setting will remain persistent for your entire visit to Gather.
- We will also increase the length of the feed to at least double its current length. We will test the impact of increasing the amount of information in the feed further still (to allow you to see more of the content you want) and will do so if we find the system responds quickly enough with the additional information.
- We will add the ability to search for articles by an author's name using Gather's primary "article search" feature.
2) New content discovery: In a follow-on release, we will also allow members to find the things that other members are enjoying most on Gather more easily. We will create a space to easily find the most viewed and most commented on content by the community. This, in addition to our own staff picks, will help the community find where the most active exploration is happening on the site.
3) Increasing privacy protection: A number of members have expressed concern about their personal feeds showing up on their profile feeds (and then being indexed by Google and other search engines). To address this need, we will allow members to turn-off their profile feeds if they prefer they not appear. In the future, we hope to allow members to make these feeds available to just certain friend sets (but not, say, Google), but that flexibility will take a little more time.
4) Simplifying the navigation: A common critique of the Gather experience, from current members and especially from new members, is that Gather is too hard to navigate. We plan to significantly simplify the navigation on the site with a release later this spring. A number of you have been helping us with the planning for this release, doing exercises and completing surveys. We are grateful for the help. We expect this release will make finding the people and content you want on Gather much easier.
5) Allowing people to find your content more easily on your profile page: Some Gatherers use their personal pages to showcase content for professional purposes to share it with friends. With our current navigation, it is often difficult to find the content people have shared on their profile pages. In an upcoming release, we will make it easier for people to find the content you have shared. In addition, we were pleased that our newly launched "Spotlight" functionality was so well received. A number of members wished to be able to spotlight older content. We will enable this functionality, but this change will take longer than some of those mentioned above.
We will not do so. We believe we are on a path to creating great member value by enabling social discovery and sharing of information (something I began to describe in the article launching my last chat). Social discovery means that the people you connect with do more than just share their thoughts. They play an additional, critical role in your life by helping you discover really interesting things that you might not otherwise have found.
Early indications are that the new system is significantly increasing the number of people who see what you are sharing on Gather and engage in conversation around it. More people are finding great content. More people are discovering interesting Gatherers.
Over these past 10 days, for example,
These numbers continue to grow day-after-day as members become used to the functionality.
- Article viewership has increased 10%
- Video viewership has increased 70%
- Image viewership has remained steady
- Communication on the site (messaging and pings) have nearly doubled
- Time on site has increased 30%
While we have lots of work to do to make this "social discovery" more flexible to better match the breadth of our member needs, we do think it is an important change and it is one that will persist in Gather's development going forward.
With that said, we recognize the importance of meeting the needs of the breadth of our membership. We hope the changes announced today will help to do that. And, as always, when we have had a chance to experience these changes together, we will continue to have an open conversation about what might make Gather a better Gather.
Again, we are grateful to everyone who invested a great deal of time in helping us understand where our most recent release was falling short (and to those who mentioned liking many of the features). Thanks for your continued support.
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A reminder: I will host our regular monthly "Talk to Tom" session tomorrow 12-1 pm EST. I hope you can join me then (go to help.gather.com at noon tomorrow for the live conversation). As always, your suggestions are welcome at improve.gather.com for this and future releases.
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Comments: 178
This sounds like a good way for everyone to be happy and Gathering again!
Looking forward to the chat.
--L
I am finding the new format better to navigate once you learn it. But that's just me I guess.
Have a good day and better tomorrow from the Burg.
I'll greatly appreciate continued improvements.
I think the traffic stats are open to several interpretations, not all of which are positive.
One thing I find disturbing is the phrase "We believe we are on a path to creating great member value by enabling social discovery and sharing of information..." I was pleased with the old UI because it enabled me do discover things and share them with others. It enabled me to discover people and share their thoughts with others. I may be obtuse but I'm not sure how the feed approach to the UI design will make that experience better or, if you'll pardon the expression, richer.
I work in IT so buzzword exposure is an occupational hazard for me. I've developed immunities and linguistic skills that the average person may not have. I think the phrase "creating member value" means improving the site for members. It would be OK if you said that instead. OTOH, maybe you did mean making members worth more. That raises the question "Worth more in whose eyes?"
More friends is always a good thing. They add up fast.
I'm glad you are responding to some of the issues people have noted, particularly security issues. I hope you will instruct people how to avoid blog-jacking article here, something that does Gather no good (since it doesn't direct people back to Gather) and also can harm writers of material here by using it without permission to direct traffic elsewhere.
As Rhetta noted, making more friends but getting less response to articles will not motivate people to be here as often. One way people have a sense of connection with others is by knowing their information is not only viewed but receives comments. For me, it is not about the points. For others, it may well be... but readers often learn from comments.
I have read many articles from people who are now getting more spam or bot type comments. Is that issue going to be addressed or controlled?
Why the shift from focus on member content to mindless chatter?
They seem to move along quicker since the upgrade.
Mindless chatter for point seeking ... NO
Articles for me with ability to see enough of what they are about as well as far enough back in time to stay updated ... YES
All the rest of it ... I could care less.
One quick answer:
Jo C- Yes, if you disable your profile feeds, they will not be indexed any longer on Google. This will show-up in Google results as soon as Google re-indexes, which is fairly often.
Why don't you just give back the Images For Me, Articles For Me Videos For Me links? It's three simple links and would make a lot (Myself included) Quite griping about Hawthorne 100%
As for this:
* Article viewership has increased 10%
* Video viewership has increased 70%
* Image viewership has remained steady
* Communication on the site (messaging and pings) have nearly doubled
* Time on site has increased 30%
I find it hard to believe, honestly. Why? READERSHIP of everyone's content has DECREASED. We have all seen it. Less readers, less comments, less everything. Why? No one can find anything.
I have spent less time here since the update, and between the ability to not find anything (save for visiting 500+ namespaces one by one) and the nicer weather my time spent here might continue to decrease. (More so weather than content issues to be honest.)
However, I'm going to be frank here. I want the content to be the focus again. Tom, I joined Gather for two reasons back in September of 2006. Why? Because I love photography and I'm a novelist. I love both photography and writing which at that time was the focus of Gather.
I don't do Myspace, Friendbook, Facebook and whatever other sites like that out there. I'd like to see Gather brought BACK to what I joined for. If I had seen Gather like it is now back then? I'm not sure I would have joined. With that having been said I am NOT leaving Gather, but I am upset that the social networking is more important than the content we work hard to produce.
I've spent more than three hours on one article between taking photos, research, formatting, uploading photos and finally publishing. Shouldn't that be the focus of the site instead of pings, connections, groups joined and so on? The social networking of the site took care of itself then. We networked on our content. We learned about one another through our content and we had wonderful conversations, again, through our content.
You see, we all enjoy each other's content, and through that the social networking took care of itself. Think about what I've said Tom. We all want our efforts to be seen.. and now? It seems like I'm publishing to 1/3 of the viewers I normally publish to before the upgrade. This saddens me. I like to SHARE the beautiful places we've been, but you can only share if people are able to find you.
i, like Npp also feel that the stats may not be reflective of why certain things increased or, in the case of images, decreased. i can tell you for me, my messaging and pinging have doubled as i can't find anyone's content as easy as i used to, so it's now gotten easier for me to sit in my inbox and just email people, but that's not what i want to be doing. image views have stayed the same due to the thumbnails being so small, so people haven't been drawn as much to them as they used to be. time spent went up as most of us have been forced to spend more time on here just to find our ways around and learn your new system, something that will most likely drop off over a short period of time as people adjust further, or in some cases leave. it's kind of like exit polls; early results never seem to match the final tally.
again, thanks for updating us.
Does this means changes to the setting will be permanent, or will it have to be annoyingly re-set every visit?
Thank you for listening and reacting with changes. I'll look forward to checking them out. I am especially glad that you are sensitive to the requests to make it easier to access good content and turn down the social networking.
No I will not use IE. I prefer to not have my system ate up with viruses thanks :) and I know all of my flash / java / what have you are updated and functional.
And I had to come back and say I agree with what Jennifer said.
One thing I'm not sure you understood about the increase in activity that you listed... There was an increase because everyone was joining together and writing/commenting negatively towards Gather. I'm not sure that's the kind of increase in activity you want. In addition, the pings are one of the most-hated features on the entire site (from what I've heard). The increase in ping activity is due to everyone mocking the ping function - not because they think pings are a great idea. Overall, it was a joke.
While the increases are great numbers to show the advertisers and whatever, I'm sure that when the buzz dies down a little more, without the changes you mention above, the activity on here would decrease overall.
Thank you for taking the time to think about and address the concerns of the community. This gives me more hope for the Gather that we've all come to love.
I look forward to reading your vision tomorrow.
Thank you for posting this. At first, while I didn't enjoy the new Gather, I wasn't opposed to it. But, I've noticed that it's less enjoyable to sift through things, harder to find things, and I've spent a lot less time here over the past week & change.
I do like Gather. I just don't like Hawthorne much, and this is after much consideration, and initially not disliking it much.
I hope that the changes you have listed can clear up some of the problems.
Thank you!
I do like the "feed me" feature as it makes it easier to find stuff that interests me BUT i would also like to see the "images for me" and "articles for me" tabs back!
That is just my input. Thank you for listening to us!
Thanks for responding.
Please consider these again tomorrow:
--The delay in publishing, in which we can't access our own material for several minutes until it shows up in one of the feeds
--The problem of the feeds reverting to all connections/all activities as soon as we navigate away from them, even if we just click the back key
--The privacy issues making this the new hangout for prospective stalkers
--The lack of thumbnails for images and videos. (I have to say, looking at the activity on my feed, that the data regarding these views is difficult to believe.)
--The sudden dramatic increase in Gather's publishing software "eating" articles since the upgrade
--I'm sure there are more questions, but to be honest, I asked them a week ago and will have to go looking for them again.
You have responded to those of us who are interested more in a writers and artists´community, and its content, than simply social networking opportunities. I greatly appreciate this. In addition, you have told me you will adjust the feed to show only articles, which really was what my protest was about, because not only do I want to have my own articles shown and not my gadfly pursuits, I also want to be able to see others´articles right away and thus avoid several dozen extra clicks an hour.
You seem to me to be aiming at a reasonable compromise, and I can´t ask for more.
Tomorrow I will set my icon back to my usual mug, and drop the blackout. I will also ask my own friends and colleagues to do the same.
That reduces security issues and allows those who want to promote themselves through Gather to do so while allowing others (domestic abuse victims who may chat on Gather, for example) to limit outside exposure on Google.
This move alone makes me feel like you are truly thinking through some of the very real issues from a more ethical perspective. I do understand that Gather needs to be profitable.
Is there a timeline in place for implementing these changes?
I agree with her comment, Tom.
When are you going to fix the current 'glitches'? Hopefully before you roll out another 'upgrade'. It's been over a week and there's still no login spot when you try to access the gift cards.
Profile details and pings do not need to be blatantly visible on the page. Links are enough. Gather is about members sharing articles and images for me.
I find it very difficult to believe that there are over 450,00 active members on Gather.
Many of those friends I made in my first year---all really good writers and photographers---have gone elsewhere!
I am glad to hear that at least some of the clutter will disappear and that all of this chatter appearing on Google can be turned off! No wonder you are finding that we are spending more time here. This ungainly Gather takes so much time to navigate. Time is something that is in short supply for me and far too precious for me to waste. Thanks again for responding to some of the people some of the time.
Article viewership has increased 10%
Video viewership has increased 70%
Image viewership has remained steady
Communication on the site (messaging and pings) have nearly doubled
Time on site has increased 30%
Not to be a total pain in the tush but could these numbers just reflect hits on a page not an actual thought going into reading or viewing the content. Yes, I have seen far more page views on my on content and way less communication. Just my own random thought.
I don't think the number is up to 500,000 yet, but i have not connected with many in the last month.
I predict: A groundswell of member activity in the next six months.
In March, of 2007 there were 250,000 members, by about June or August, about 400,000. In October, 2006 there were about 100,000.
The original and then subsequent First Chapters contests brought in a HUGE number of members.
I am member number 20,000 something from Jan 06 so that tells you how much has been going on since then.
When you check Recent articles you will find people you've never heard of.
1)In addition, the pings are one of the most-hated features on the entire site.(Lainie)
Absolutely. They are silly, childish and redundant. Completely unneccessary, time-wasting and cluttering. Do you seriously think anyone wants to know when Harry pinged Sally, and vice versa?
2) We networked on our content. We learned about one another through our content and we had wonderful conversations, again, through our content.
Jennifer
Precisely! I became a member of Gather when it was being touted as a 'site for writers' and I looked forward to contacting and commiserating with fellow professionals. I did find a few, and also discovered a group of people who appreciated my work and were vocal about their opinions. Social networking ensued. Hawthorne has thrown a giant monkey wrench into my communication capabilities and has completely dampened my desire to publish anything of substance here. It's just too much effort for too little return.
Additionally, the upgrade is rife with glitches. Articles are being 'eaten' before publication, friend requests are not showing up in our inboxes, people are wandering around, lost and forlorn, looking for each other. Gather has become a sad, sad place, Tom. Is that worth the higher click count you get to attract advertisers?
So, when you connect with member number 555,555 - you will know that that many people have registered.
I have not seen any numbers over about 480,0000...but that is only a matter of time.
What would be REAAALLY nice.. and I know this is a change MANY actually HAVE asked for...while we're putting in suggestions.. if you could make it easier to publish by letting us group our related groups in sets and publish to them all at the same time.. without having to click on each one and add it every time we want to publish.. it's such a hassle. That would be awesome. I know we have the find box but it still requires a lot of hunting and sorting through the groups to find the right ones.. and still requires us to click on each to add it.. grrrrr..
But, I'm very pleased to see some of these issues addressed. I never expected to get our old, beloved Gather back. This last downgrade just created more problems than any other in the history of my time spent here. The fact that you're addressing what you are gives me the slightest sigh of relief. This is OUR community. We're the ones who frequent the site. Thank you for whatever you're going to try.
I'd like a timeframe for fixing these issues, individually. I also have a question about who is the intended demographic for Gather these days? I remember reading, once, that it was aimed toward middle aged, middle class people with some time on their hands and discretionary income. I fit that demographic. I don't know how I fit the demographic of the ping generation.
I agree. I have a beautiful essay about my day with the Cranes to publish, but it includes so many photos it'd be a multiple part photo essay and I just don't have the desire to share it and let the social networking gobble it up in the feeds.
Also Tom are you aware that there are members coming to our content stating that our content was NOT in their feed? What's the sense of having a feed that neglects to show the content in the first place? I realize this is a bug and it'll probably be fixed, but again, this is upsetting to those that work to publish quality content.
Thank you Tom for hearing our concerns.
I am glad you addressed the concerns of the community. I am a firm believer in facing problems head on and you proved that theory to work great. Thanks
I wanted to see how many of my fellow Gatherites were from Cincinnati (as I am), and was amazed at the huge number of people from there. However, when I started opening their profiles there were so many that had joined on one day and then never returned! I don't think those types of "members" (I would call them "inactive") should be included in the 450,000 number.
And with Ina, I think a time frame would be a reasonable addition as well.
Thank You Glitter Graphics
Some people are complaining about things that they just haven't figured out. For instance, some are complaining that their articles aren't accessible for several minutes between publishing and showing up in their feed. I can find mine whenever I want when I click on 'articles' and 'by me'. Accessible. Seen by all immediately, no, but accessible.
Others are complaining that they are searching for their favorite members to find content and blah blah blah. How about bookmarks? Even that is a temporary fix until Hawthorne becomes more familiar to them or new changes go into effect. Find a member once and save their namespace as a bookmark in a Gather folder in your favorite places. Problem solved, right? If your stance is "I shouldn't have to" ... well, you may be right, but if you want to get around easier until you learn otherwise or changes are made, it's going to save you time.
Ultimately, Tom, your taking the time to publish this article and address concerns means that you do want us to know what's going on ... to a certain extent. I am with Lainie that you have done well on several fronts. I look forward to hearing more from you.
Erin - Making a bookmark for over 500 people? I don't think so. I don't play favorites at Gather. I like to visit everyone not just "favorite" people.
"For instance, some are complaining that their articles aren't accessible for several minutes between publishing and showing up in their feed. I can find mine whenever I want when I click on 'articles' and 'by me'. Accessible."
Not for spotlighting they aren't. It takes around 10 minutes to be able to spotlight content now.
" Bottom line: Gather will never suit everyone 100% of the time and you can only do what you can do ... and our members should try to understand your position in that regard."
Very true, and I'm only looking for a compromise. It's only right to try to compromise... and that is what it seems Tom is aiming for.
I think the feeds are going to be difficult with 6 different types of information running through them and possible problems with slowdowns if you increase the 500 item limit.
Maybe you could reserve feeds for just articles, images and videos and think of another way (or second, optional feed) to promote pinging, comments and friends that makes them more useful and fun. I don't find the last three features attractive as they're presented now. I see them as an annoyance to be avoided.
What about the so and so made friends with so and so?
I will not add to my gather connections so long as this continues. Some privacy would be nice. And again why do I need to know who is pinging who? Too much information