The latest Gather upgrade introduces new profile features that help you introduce yourself to others on Gather. We've also included improvements to your namespace, icon management, and Gather Group access.
Gather member profiles are important for many reasons. Providing profile information helps others get to know and understand you better. Providing profile information also lets you find others who share your interests and similar information. As always you have the option to control who can access the information you provide to protect your privacy at the level you wish.
Here's an overview of what's new on Gather.
The first thing you'll notice about your new Gather profile is it's new look. The layout is cleaner and better organized. The sections include basic info, about me, interests, and affiliations.
The second thing you'll learn is that the edit profile options are also improved. Each section of your profile has its own edit link. Clicking that will display the profile edit options for that section of information. You don't need to leave your profile to change your information and you can easily update part of your profile selectively without all the other options.
Your Basic Profile information
Basic info on your profile includes your name, location, gender, birthday and other information people share on Gather. This section also has some new features too.
Taglines
You can now add a tagline to your profile. Your tagline is a great way to tell others about you at a glance. This will display with your name in many locations throughout the site including your namespace, on the left side of all your content pages under your name and icon, on people search. Get creative with your tagline.
Status
Visit your profile and update your status frequently to let others know about big news in your world, what's on your mind or your mood today. Your status will display on your profile and Namespace page.
Children information
Do you have kids? Hoping to start a family? Sharing your family info is a great way to connect with others like you. Now you can also share information about your children and find other gather members with similar families. When you share that you have children you can also let others know if your kids are young, teenagers, in college, or if you have adult children. (Note: The "adult children" option isn't intended as a way to let others know that your spouse is immature).
About Me
This profile section includes a place for you to write about yourself and why you are on Gather. We've also added a new option.
People Say I'm...
Are you curious, goofy, or maybe a really bad karaoke singer? A few short words or phrases can say a lot about you. It's a quick easy way to highlight your qualities. These will display on all your Gather content and Namespace pages to let others get to know you better and help you find similar people using people search. Be sure to separate words and phrases with commas (these are similar to tags).
My Interests
What are you into? Interests are a great way to let others get to know you. Every interest you list will display on your profile. Others click them to find people who share those interests. We've made several changes to the interests section. Some categories have been combined such as books and writers. We've also removed a few categories (heroes for example) that not many people seemed to use. We have added a few new categories to add your favorite places and a wish list.
What are you in to today?
Another new addition to the interests section lets you include your most current interests. Each interest section has a second space for what you are in to now. What book are you currently reading? What musician do you like best this week? What are you currently curious about? Add these to your profile and update these often as your interests change.
This information still interacts with people search the same as the lists you provide with your interests. Your current interests also appear on your Namespace and change every few moments to encourage others to read your profile and learn about you.
Create your own interest category
You can now create your own interest list. Make it anything you like. Use the title box to provide a name for your list. Each item you list will display on your profile.
Affiliations Updates
Now you may choose to share the political candidates you support along with your political affiliation. Politics is a top interest for Gather members and with the elections coming soon you can use this option to discover who others support.
You can also include links to your personal or favorite websites in your profile. Adding links to your artist portfolio, company website, or favorite place to shop also helps others know you better. Adding a link to your Gather Namespace from your other websites is also a great way to increase traffic to your pages so we hope you'll do that too.
Share your affiliations, and open yourself up to great conversations. You may even reconnect with old friends!
Ping Me
Pings are notes that other Gather members can leave for you on your profile. You can also leave Pings on other peopleÂ?s profiles. It's a great way to say hi and meet others who interest you.
Meaningful and thoughtful Pings can be the beginning of great new Gather friendships so please be considerate. Pings should not be user to post spam messages or just to ask others to visit your pages. Posting or receiving Pings do not earn you Gather Points.
Of course you can always control who is allowed to ping you. By default any Gather member can Ping you. You have the option to restrict who can use this feature only to your connections or turn it off entirely. You can change your ping settings using the "change settings" link located at the top right of the "ping me" area of your profile. You'll be notified when new profile pings are posted if you leave that option on in your email preference settings. Email notifications for pings are controlled along with your comment notifications
You may also choose to approve all pings posted to your profile before they appear. If you turn this option on you will have the option to either approve or decline the ping. You'll be notified when new profile pings require your review if you leave that option on in your email preference settings.
You can delete any Ping posted to your profile. You can also delete any Ping You post on another member's profile. Just click the "delete ping" link under the member icon image. Remember, there's no turning back. Once a ping is deleted it's gone forever.
Gather Personal Icons
We've added "Change Icon" options to your Namespace and profile pages to make it easier to keep your image up to date. When you use the "change icon" link you will get to the upload image page directly and the change icon option will be pre-selected for you.
New notices have also been added to this process if you accidentally make your icon private. We'll inform you when creating an icon if you set it to private or adult. Icon's now need to be public images published to "everyone".
You can still choose to select an existing image as your icon by editing any image youÂ?ve published previously. To use an image you already published on Gather as your personal icon image visit your Namespace Images Gallery, find an existing image, click edit image, and set the image as your icon.
Namespace Changes
Your Namespace page now includes a new "Mini Profile" across the top of the page. This includes a larger icon image that clicks directly to your image page so people can easily see your icon image larger or leave a comment. The Mini Profile contains basic profile information that you make public and a synopsis of your "About Me" description. Current interests you share will actively scroll every few moments to let others know your interests and encourage people to read your profile and your content.
Another enhancement to your Namespace keeps your Namespace main navigation on all of your article, image, and video pages when people click to view your content from your namespace. This makes is much easier for your readers to return to your Namespace pages to discover more of your contributions on Gather.
Gather Group Enhancements
Just like the Namespace enhancement noted above. Gather Group content will also retain the Groupspace navigation options in the main tool bar at the top of the page when articles, images, and video are accessed from any group page. Groups contain a lot of great content so we hope you like using this new option to spend more time in your favorite groups by easily returning to a group after reading or viewing content you enjoy.
The Recent Groups, Popular Groups, and Featured Groups pages accessible from the main Groups tab now include refine options similar to Gather Group Search. This is a great way to refine these group pages and discover interesting Gather Groups for you.
We hope you enjoy these enhancements and new features as much as we've enjoyed bringing them to you. We're always building a better gather and your feedback is our key source of information. We look forward to reading your comments below.
As always, if you find something broken send us an email at support@gather.com so we can improve or fix problems quickly. Ideas concerning features not included in this upgrade can be submitted to the Building a Better Gather group. I personally read every item submitted.
Thanks for using Gather!
recommend this
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 92
I don't LIKE all the searchable profiles. I am NOT searching among profiles for who to read. I go through the articles, usually focusing on the "Articles For Me".
I have already seen several people who are going to make their profiles blank or who have always had blank profiles. These recent changes have validated their decision not to post all their personal info.
I also don't like the generic responses we have to choose from like the one for whether or not we have/want children. I like to be able to decided what/how I want to respond. These choices remind me of the Gather polls..there is never a response that is exactly what I want to say in response to the poll question.
I'm having major issues with spacing in my article and also with an error message when I post.
Then why bother?
I suspect that many of the folks who prefer to socialize with ridiculously large groups and have little interest in meaningful dialog will welcome these changes. I do not.
I have had a blast this morning looking around and finding all the new neat stuff. I like it.
I am sure it will be up and working properly in no time.
Good Luck with it. Gather
Feel free to Ping me ; )
Would you explain more of WHY this is an available function in addition to e-mail? I'm just going to opt out, but don't understand the point of it.
Lightbox feature in the edit profile is so cool.
I don't care if people can see what my sexual preference is or if I have kids. If I didn't want people to know in the first place, I would have never filled those fields out. I only filled out what I felt comfortable sharing. Maybe some of these whiners should have done the same.
The java applet windows or whatever they are eg. when you click the ping settings link don't seem to want to load. I haven't tried letting it go for more than five minutes yet.
I'm with Stephanie.
The consequence of the up-grade for me is that, like Wilma, I am going to delete half of my profile.
Why Pings Vs Private Messages?
Messages are meant to be private one to one communications. We added Pings so that people who wish to make a public statement or provide a testimnial on a profile can do so. Not everyone on Gather wants to publish articles. That doesn't mean that they don't want to get notes from people. Your profile is a way for each Gather member to present themselves on the site. And why not let people tell you what they think outside of an article or image. If you love think someone is a talented photographer or a great poet that let them and all viewers of their profile know by leaving Pings.
The social network trend disturbs me. Not that I don't talk to people here, I just don't see the value in the new features.
When I originally filled in my profile, I didn't really feel like sharing with the world my birthday or my hometown. I set those profile items to be private. I was shocked and dismayed when I logged in to Gather this morning and on my namespace I noticed that... HOLY CRAP! THE STUFF THAT I SET TO 'PRIVATE' IS STILL PRIVATE. Oh wait, that's not shock and dismay after all, because I'm not crazy.
Maybe Gather thought putting a little more info about you on your namespace - info that YOU PROVIDED IN THE FIRST PLACE AND MADE PUBLIC - would give people a better idea of who you were than a "Name 3 Christmas Things You Can See Right Now" article or a "My Life Sucks" diatribe.
Or maybe I am crazy. At least my cornflakes don't taste like crap.
I have met some really awesome people on Gather. I love learning more about them, and I love having an easy way to drop them a line and say, Hey, how's it going?
Granted, I'm a little bit biased. But, seeing as how I work for a social networking site, I like having more social networking features. Thanks UX, Dev & QA!
What are the advantages to the new features? Not just "they're great." I'm interested in what specific new features do for you.
I think the tag and status are marginally nice to have.
I agree, although if members had elected to keep that info private in their profile and it suddenly became public with the upgrade, as many are indignantly claiming, I think there's a legitimate gripe. The paranoia about dangerous predators cruising here for victims is laughable if you've already provided that info in your profile.
I'd already chosen not to provide any information so now I'm stuck with a big box o' nothing at the top of my page.
Out of curiosity--why did they move the "member since, last signed in" info further in? You now have to click on the full profile for that information instead of seeing it on the person's namespace.
Nippy - its a good thing you don't eat breakfast. There seems to be a rash of bad cornflakes going around.
I always use the profile info before accepting a connection request as some people are obviously incompatible with me based upon profiles ... it is a good tool.
I have found one thing that I do like, I like to be able to download a new icon by browsing the files on my computer instead of searching through pages of my photos on Gather one page at a time.
I think the people who like all the silly things like how you can put in your daily status and 'pinging", are probably very young and/or coming here from MySpace or Facebook type sites.
I think this is going to make it much harder to make true friends on here like we have in the past.
I think all features are what you make of them. If you don't like sharing particular bits of information, it seems like there are plenty of privacy settings to accommodate everyone.
I like the new updates myself - I'm particularly fond of the ticker that updates under your profile saying what you're reading, watching, etc. Fun!
And thanks for letting us link to our websites! I listed all my sites and was pleased to see that the area seems to turn them into HTML links.
Really!? How will profile information (much of which was already there in the first place) make it harder to make "true friends"? All they've done is taken the same information and moved it. The only way you'll see it is if you go to the person's namespace anyway; it's not like the profile info is posted next to everyone's icon within conversation threads.
Glitter Angel Graphics
No worries for me, I didn't feel like sharing my birthday or where I live, so I
I set those profile items to be private. :-)
Regarding pinging - I'd rather ping than points. I'm a serious writer and want to meet others like me so we can exchange ideas and friendships and the trials and tribulations of trying to become a published writer. I don't care if I have points towards money or gift cards and have never cashed mine in. But if someone wants to ping me with a nice conversation that's fine. To me a ping can serve as a step between commenting and private messaging. A comment can be for serious critique on the subject at hand, but the ping can be a personal conversation with someone beyond that comment, that doesn't have to get lost in all of my private messages which are full of stuff I can't keep track of. If nothing else - I can ping someone and say hey - I need to send you a private message - look for it. I've sent private messages and I've missed private messages because it was lost amongst all the other "please give me points" messages that I receive every day.
I don't like the big goofy box on my name space. To me it distracts away from my content. I want people to find my articles and pictures because they are interested in the content not that I 'have no children'. In mind of that, I have made nearly all the content seen in said ugly box private.
I also don't like that the member since info is now hidden in the profile. I liked to see how long people were on here at a glance.
And on the subject of pinging. .. why? If you want to talk to someone, the gather mail system works just fine. If you want your comment to be public. .. . comment on the members content. It just doesn't make sense to add another feature that does the same thing, as others.
I wish gather would do something about all the malicious flagging and down rating that goes on, and other problems the site has (many members I am sure have written articles on the subject), instead of prettying things up.
Just my feedback :)
I have to agree about the profile info being made public. I thought we were given a "heads up" about new features and the right to opt out. If I'm wrong, I hope someone will correct me. Perhaps it wasn't clear that the profiles would automatically be public. I'm not sure how the ping featue works. Is it like an "instant message"? Does the option to "ping" go away if someone is offline? That would be interesting if it did.
re: pinging - At DeviantArt.com and lastfm.com, it's called a shoutbox. No one's ever used it on my page, but then I don't have hundreds of watchers either. I could take it or leave it.
In any case, seems to be mostly window dressing. It would be more useful if you had interests up there on top rather than relationship stats. Also as one who's used LiveJournal for six years, I am incredibly frustrated by a flat, non-threaded comment list. It's very difficult to see who's replied to who, especially if you have to scroll down the page to find it.
What I don't understand is how so many of the so-called serious writers here, spend more time bitching about this place than anything else. Everytime a new update is incorporated into the system, they come out with more complaints than my hypochondriac auntie.
People, people, people... this place is FREE. That means a lot, surely? You don't pay to join, nobody twisted your arm to make you come here. You get to showcase your work here, get comments on them and receive GIFT CARDS
And yet people complain about every damn thing. Ungratefulness is the rule of the day here and quite frankly, disgusting to see. I was taught to have better manners.
Come on, guys, show a little civility here. Be thankful you have a FREE place to show your work. So what if you didn't get what was originally promised? So what if some people have nothing better to do than rate your article low. So what if your pages don't load faster. So what if Gather is not as perfect as you want it to be? It's not costing you or kill you. Besides, you can always LEAVE if you don't like it here!
Quityerbitchin' already. Change WITH Gather..........Grow up ............!
Rest easy
I see you;ve pointed me in the right direction and my mind is off /on to explore some more. Thanks I seem better now. Well rested but I never tested it yet. but I will there is so much to explore. Thanks for opening another door .
and Adam Peck replied: "Jerry - glitter graphic angels are an old lady thing, not a teen chat room thing"
I would love it if all the glitter graphic crap that currently pollutes conversation threads was strictly relegated to pings because then I'd never have to see it.