Access: The Key To Community

Over the past year, we have learned a great deal from the Gather community and worked to build a better Gather for you. For 2007, I am extremely excited about a new offering from Gather that will provide you with easier access to the breadth and dept of amazing content that is on the Gather site today, and provide you with the opportunity to engage with thought leaders and great writers from the worldwide community of experts. The two key elements of our new effort will appear through our new Home Page, our new Navigation elements in the left-hand column, and through a new content program we call Gather Essentials.

Getting Around Gather
You’ll notice a few things that are different today when you visit our home page, which you can always find by clicking on the Gather logo or text link on the top left of the page. If you have been to our site before, the first thing you will notice is that we have grown our number of featured articles from one conversation to ten topical areas. When you get there, you will see what our Editors think is cool. As you watch the screen, top stories in Books, Food, Health, Money and more will appear in sequence. You can stop and start this toolbar at anytime if there is a story you want to spend some time reviewing or clicking through to.

Second, you will notice that the topics in this feature box match a few new navigational elements on the left side of the page. The first element incorporates nine channels of content that we call “Gather Essentials,” as they contain the most Gather-worthy content on the site. We are starting with nine Essentials, but will bring more topics to you over the course of 2007, so stay tuned if your favorite topic does not have its own space yet. I’ll say more on that in a moment. Further down the home page, you will find additional content from each of the Essentials. You will find more people, and more images. You will also find more groups, with a hint at the specific content in those groups, at the bottom of the page.

Below the Essentials section is another new feature. Want to know what groups Gather recommends? Look on the left column under “Suggested Groups.” Here you will find a list of groups that we feel you ought to know about, and these will change constantly. If you don’t like what we show you, you can search from any page to find the groups on the topics most interesting to you. We’ve done the same with tags, allowing you to click on popular topics, or do a search for the word that resonates with your thought when you are anywhere on Gather.

What are Essentials?
Let’s get back to the Essentials. In addition to clear navigation to these areas of the site, Gather is going to focus on creating a great content experience in these areas. Most importantly, we want you to contribute content to these Essentials, which act like Groups. When you have content to post on a relevant topic, feel free to post your article or image to the group. YOU are our most important source for great content.

Second, we have created the Gather Correspondent Corps, a team of 70 Gather members who will be contributing to one of the nine Essentials on a consistent basis. You will recognize them by their new icon, the columns that they write, and the consistency with which they appear on Gather. Some members of the Corps are new to Gather; we welcome them to the Gather family.

Third, we will continue to create great programming for you in each Essentials area. Over the past two months we have had guests in the Politics Essential like Senator Evan Bayh, former Speaker Newt Gingrich, and Senator Charles Schumer. We will continue to present you with some popular and some controversial authors. Over the next few weeks we will start to introduce you to some well-known authors and thought leaders in all nine areas whom you can engage with directly.

I encourage you to take a look at all of our Gather Essentials and to join them in order to stay up to date on the experts and programs within each of these areas.

Finally, we have also made some significant improvements to the Gather site that members will find exciting. If you’d like to learn more, please watch this brief video…

Here are some more details of the changes we are making with this great new release:

Navigation on the left side of (nearly) every page. The top of the standard Left column on the home page and much of the site, includes 3 new elements.
1.    At the top of the column is a list of the Essentials, making them one click away from every piece of content on the site.
2.    Below that is a set of “Suggested Groups” that will help members find interesting content and events happening on Gather. This section also includes the ability to find the most popular and most recent groups, or search for a group you might be interested in joining.
3.    The bottom of the left column on the site and the home page will be a tags section.  The Tags section will include a list of the most popular tags from the past week, and a series of links that allow you to navigate by tag.

“My Gather” Modules. We have moved the Articles For Me section of the “My Gather” page to the top, so you can quickly find interesting content created by your connections.

Contextual Tag Drill Down for Members and Groups. Within a Groupspace or Namespace, the left column now shows a list of tags that are directly relevant. When you click on a tag on one of these two types of pages, you will only get articles within that group or namespace. The ability to drill down within a part of the Gather site to find something will make navigation of the site and access to email much faster and more efficient.

Today’s Gather is the product of suggestions you have made over the last year.  Please join us in the Build a Better Gather forum (improve.gather.com) to discuss next steps we should take.  I look forward to seeing you on the site. 

Join All of the Essentials Now