Every month, 1.3 million people come to Gather to read what you share, join in the conversation, and make new friends that share their interests. Gather members share their ideas here for a variety of reasons. Most enjoy expressing themselves. Some feel a pressing need to influence the national debate. Others want advice or support. And a lot of people just enjoy the conversation they have here with their friends.
While on Gather, many members craft exceptional content and invest real time in joining conversations started by others. When they do, they want to be sure they are heard. While we have more than 1.3 million people visiting Gather each month, we know that many of you may connect with people other places as well. For example, our Summer 2009 survey revealed that:
- 76% of Gather members are Facebook members
- 36% of Gather members use Twitter
We want to make sure that your voice is heard everywhere that you would like it to be heard. This evening, we are launching new technology that will allow you to opt-in to share the content you post to Gather (posts, images, and videos) easily with your friends on Facebook and followers on Twitter. The same goes for the comments you post here as well. Starting tomorrow, by just checking a single box, your content and comments can automatically be shared with your connections on Facebook and Twitter (after a quick one-time set-up process to link your accounts for each service to your Gather account).
You are in control
When we designed this update, we recognized that, while many members will want to share their thoughts and experiences with their networks on Facebook and Twitter, some will not. We have built this technology so that you decide whether to connect your Gather account with your Facebook account and/or your Twitter account. If you do connect your accounts, you can choose what you want to send to Facebook and Twitter and what you don’t, post-by-post and comment-by-comment. This means that you have total control over what appears on Gather and what you share on other services as well. And if you never set up the Facebook/Twitter sharing service you can of course still continue to share on Gather with just your Gather friends.
We hope this update will make sure that your creative inspirations, favorite recipes, social commentary, family photos, political perspectives, and everything else you share reaches everyone you would like it to reach. As always, I am grateful for your thoughts and encourage your questions.
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Comments: 86
Second, we have added the ability to share comments that you make as well. Many members write substantive comments and invest real time in writing those comments. We wanted to make it possible for you to share those as well. The picture I included above shows the new comment box.
I will let our marketing team know you enjoyed the Summer Pics promotion. Typically our promotions are sponsored by other companies (you may remember that HP did a photography promotion with us last year). We can see if companies making cameras, photo printers, or photo books might be interested in another program like this.
Thanks for the suggestion! I'll be sure our team follows-up.
I try to limit my friend connections on FB to folks that are not already participating on Gather. That way I can share some of the content I post here with my network over there and hopefully earn a little more for my Gather time.
I am glad you have found good friends here, though, Penni!
Whoa! How many people will read what I share if I do this Facebook and Twitter thing? I could use some more readers.
on how many Facebook friends and Twitter followers you have and
how closely they follow what you share there.
Once we have some good general statistics on use, I'll share back what we are seeing for the community as a whole. Please come back and let us know if you find it has an impact too.
I can see that using Facebook will increase the connectivity of the average Gather member, and suspect that this is what all socio-net sites are after. But I don't see that serious writers will gain much by posting their work to Facebook, unless they want to put in a lot of time there to build up a following.
PS You aren't going deaf...I just paused to watch this week's episode of Mad Men while having dinner with my roommate.
Another gather friend and I monitored our content amount and the amount of views & comments each of those pieces received in a given day, for an 8-day period. Her views are easily 2 to 3 times what mine are, and in a shorter period too. Her earnings were still nearly equal to mine. So unless something was seriously tweaked in last night's upgrade, outside views earnings aren't much.
I keep my FB page so only people who know me and by that I mean the (sometimes) nice easy to get along with me and have very few connections on there so if I link my gather and FB account does that mean that the more persistant (potential stalker) members of gather will have access through those links?
My second question is..will we get more points if we come here and tell you what a GREAT IDEA and THANKS?
You *will* earn more points, however, if you share your Gather content/comments on Facebook and Twitter and that leads to more people reading what you share here.
I am glad you think I think the upgrade is great.
This should be fine since it is an "optional" sharing choice. This will make the members who do not like either of these Sites happy.
THANKS!
And on the personal side, I am in NYC for the Digiday:Social conference today. Text me if you are local and maybe we can meet-up (or even drag Frank out for a drink)?
sdometimes I get sad because not as many coments any more.THEN I look and see all the views and smile.
them.
Thanks, Tom.
Facebook and Twitter are better suited to sound bites, so by leaving a link/sound bite on those sites for your connections there to see, they can easily click through to Gather where thoughts and ideas are often discussed more substantially than sound bites.
Does that make sense? What I'm trying to say is that we hope by adding these features you're able to easily leave a "teaser" that brings your connections to Gather to look more closely at your content. Some of those connections may join Gather. It becomes a win-win for members and for the business of Gather. Members get more views, which results in more points. Gather overall gets more views, which results in more sales opportunities and a more vibrant business.
You Can View It HERE.
Congratulations!