Last week I published a couple articles focusing on some cool, new enhancements about to be unveiled on Gather. This article is an introduction to the joys of social bookmarking, and a look at the new social bookmarking options that will soon be added to Gather. This article focuses on improvements and refinements coming to your Gather Feeds.
Today, I'd like to take a look at three other features you'll soon see on Gather.
Better Support:
A new form will be added to the site to make it easier for you to contact Gather's Member Support Team and help the team respond to you even faster. To ask a question, report a glitch, or speak directly with someone from Gather Member Support, simply click on the numerous links across the site that say "contact member support" – this will launch the new support form. Additionally, you can always ask questions and get answers on Gather's daily Help article, found at help.gather.com.
Easier Invites:
We all know it's more fun to Gather with friends… soon it will be easier than ever to invite them to the site. In just a few days you'll be able to import you address book from nearly every web e-mail provider out there. Furthermore, Gather will easily enable you to invite your friends from MySpace and Facebook. Once you access your address book or friend network, Gather will tell you which of your buddies are already on the site, allowing you to make a quick and easy friend request. When a new friend accepts your invitation to join Gather, you will automatically be connected.
Refining Private Messaging:
There have been many, many complaints about the abuse of Gather's private messaging service. Members are constantly complaining that others use this feature to SPAM the community. Ironically, the original idea behind this feature was to allow members to communicate with each other one to one. We are now working hard to return to that vision. Soon, you will notice a big change in how Gather private messaging works. Gather will streamline all private messages by eliminating the CC:, BCC:, and TAG fields. When deciding to whom you should send your message, you will be presented with a list of all your friends and you will then be asked which ones should receive the message… making each message deliberate and meaningful. Going forward you will know that each message that shows up in your in-box was in-fact sent specifically to you.
Once these improvements are live on the site, we want to know what you think of them. Please visit improve.gather.com to share your feedback, suggestions, and words of wisdom.
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Comments: 87
If they want to say, "I know you got a notification in your email, *and* you saw it appear in your Feed, but I still want to send you a Gather-mail message that they published a new article-game "List your your favorite definitions from your dictionary!" and I hope you'll all leave me a million comments!" then, by cracky, they will still send out that email.
The only difference is that we don't have the BCC option, so we'll be hit with a complete list of the lucky recipients before we encounter the mindless mail.
Or, maybe your explanation wasn't entirely clear -- do you mean that the new feature will eliminate that long list of recipients? If so, we still get spammed, without it.
Or -- am I missing something here?
Other than that, no complaints.
a) Are we now limited to only sending a message to one person at a time?
b) Can we send a message to a member that is not a part of our network?
c) Without tags, will there be other ways to categorize and group messages?
Thanks Pam
Terribly disappointing and sad... you HAD a good thing going, but not any more.
All I'd need to do is write my usual "Read the grocery list I just published!" lame email demand and select each/all of my "Friends" -- just because I can't BCC to hide the list, or CC so they're not all in the "To" field does not make my email less of a slab of spam.
1) It takes three days to upload a BANNER to a New Group. And then it isn't correct when it uploads.
2) The feeds do not stay on what you've clicked on ALL DAY like we were told. If I want to see just "Articles", it clicks back to "All Activities".
3) On the Profile Pages, when I go to visit friends, their images totally disappear after I've clicked on anything on their page.
4) The "infamous white blank space" that appears for "friendship" requests is still happening. There are many people who have tried to connect with me, or who I have tried to connect with, but the request would not go through.
5) The social networking will really only create more problems. I'm a member of stumbleupon, but I never really use it, because it creates more technical difficulties than it is worth. Others may really want this social networking feature, but until Gather has fixed what is wrong here first, not another thing should be added or enhanced.
This Site is slowing down more and more with each change.
Why remove "tags"? The tags help us to find things that we probably would not otherwise find. I am really getting more disappointed by the minute. This was really a wonderful place, and I personally feel as if someone just threw a whole bunch of stuff in my room, and now I can't find anything. Things are smaller, and pretty soon, I'll need a magnifying glass just to view things.
It is really hard to plan for anything around here, because you start to become paranoid that the place will be in "glitch" mode, and your good ideas and planning will be glitched up.
I really hate to complain, but really nothing more needs to be added right now. Just fix everything first. No more connections to this mess. No social networking needed when you can't find the people right here in Gather. The emails are overflowing because people cannot find one another. We really do not need more people connected to us. Who is thinking up these ideas?!
I suppose it is fun for those who do not have a lot of things going on, but not for those who do.
At least you let us know when to prepare to be more unhappy.
Thanks Pam.
I visit my profile page frequently and hope to see the news that my friends/connections have posted a fresh ARTICLE/PHOTO/VIDEO. The clutter of who commented on what, who is friends with whom, who pinged who is a messy nightmare.
Since the last change, I have used Gather less, as it's too difficult to use, and no one seems to be able to find me. Eventually I feel, I'll have to phase it out because it will be pointless. I shouldn't have to sign up at another social networking site, just to have my things read. There were people, plenty of people here, until the last upgrade scared most of them away.
Spam is best enjoyed in small cubes, attached to a whole pineapple by way of a toothpick.
Good idea on the SPAM, regardless of The Chive's intern's future employment status.
Thanks for the heads up. Less Spam is going to be wonderful.
Now if people would STOP emailing every article & photo they ever wrote or published it would be even better. I do not go to those articles any more. It is not fair to spam peoples mail boxes with articles.
Once in awhile ok but day after day is a big turn off to me.
Thanks Gather for caring what we think and trying to fix it.
That list is one thing I try to keep to a minimum.
Back to Author's Den I guess.
I think perhaps you meant you are removing tags from private messages. I've never used them. Who wants someone to search up my private message to a friend. Not me.
Guess why more people are sending mass emails? Because other people can't find their photos and articles since Hawthorne
The Hawthore upgrade was certainly a typical example of what promised to offer members to find content of interest more easily. Obviously, from all the feedback I've seen, it's done anything but. As I guessed, it was more a ploy for Gather to attract the types of members from the sites who had it in their insightful missions from the start to be social networks. Gather continues to follow like a lost puppy. (Lost Puppy is a good name for an upgrade)
This new interest Gather has in promoting social bookmarking sites and making it easier to invite people seems to indicate to me that Hawthorne's endeavor may not have been so successful for Gather's purposes either. Both of these 'improvements' focus on using members to promote and propagate interest in Gather. From a business standpoint, it's a resourceful way to advertise. From a member standpoint, well... it's just dirty pool.
Also, you will be able to hide all your feed activity from the public if you choose.
The spam will definitely be reduced, and with the customizations allowable in the feeds and enhanced search features, there will no longer be a need to alert everyone on your email list when you publish something. They will already know.
The customer support service is being greatly streamlined and will ultimately result in better (and faster) service.
The social network bookmarks will be back, but with more options. You can choose to use them or not, but you will get more readers if you do. (You may or may not want that, but it's completely up to you.) The social network bookmarks are a plus for people who are interested in reaching people who are interested in what they write about.
Sending messages and invites to people outside of gather will be easier, too.
Another improvement being launched tomorrow is the ability to easily spotlight any of your older articles, photos or videos.
I really can't add much to that. The Hawthorne build appeared to me to be a beta with many features left out. I don't see that eliminating BCC will do much to eliminate bulk mail. I've invited friends to join. It's not hard. I tell them "There's a site called 'gather' that I spend a lot of time on." Why bother to make something easier than speaking to someone? Can you make it easier than speech or email?
For a closer look at refinements to the Feeds that were specifically suggested by you, the Gather community... please click here URL text link to read my article entitled "Improvements To Your Gather Feeds".... for a closer look at the new social bookmarking options that will soon be added to Gather...
click here URL text link for my article entitled "Get More Page Views, How Social Bookmarking Can Help."
what'd you guys do THAT for? it's not logical and it decreases productivity and exposure for writers and photographers and people who are trying to NETWORK.
put back the bcc!
I think it's important to note here that Gather Messaging is not an e-mail provider. It wasn't built for that purpose and isn't meant to be used as a substitute for e-mail. It's a messaging system… designed for people to communicate with each other one-to-one.
This morning I was also writing a read/review request to Collins Publishing and something occured which has been happening frequently lately....
I pressed the enter button to move to the next line and Gather sent my mail prematurely.
One more carp from me--publishing has been sucking lately. I am not sure if it is my computer or the gather site, but I can no long copy directly from Microsoft word and be assured of a proper copy.
I would hope that before adding new things to the Gather site, the powers that be would first fix the old glitches.
I intend to follow the links in this article, but I am hoping to regain some of my privacy on this site. In my opinion, it is no ones business who connected with or pinged who. I find that very offensive, even though I really enjoy this site.
As I said, social bookmarking links of both digg and delicious were included at the bottom of every article published when I first joined. At that time there was already a faction expressing displeasure with the site's movement away from the writing emphasis. Since I was new, I had nothing to compare, and although there was some junk, I found a lot of great content at that time. What we have now is mostly a site that would be more aptly named Letters To Ann Landers.
If Gather had really been interested in promoting the work of writers, then they would have made more an issue of bookmarking sites when we had writers here, so that other writers would have been attracted. Now it's just a diary of people's daily lives, and that's at best. As the articles get linked to the bookmarked sites, more of the same will be members here. I realize that Gather is interested in these numbers more than anything. Perhaps, it's just a sad fact of survival, nonetheless, the reality needs to be recognized and either accepted or rejected by all of us here. There's no longer any reason to suggest improvements that we would like to see.
How many of us, before Hawthorne, expressed the desire to have groups organized so that we would be able to eliminate the content of no interest and be able to more easily locate what we want to see? Did this happen? What were we given in response to this request? We were given this horrendous feed that was shoved down our throats as something we asked to have. That's just an absolute lie!
I'm sorry I took up so much of your space here, but this is the last of my efforts to respond to any changes Gather makes in the future. Gather will do as it pleases, presenting its decisions in the best light possible to make those decisions seem in keeping with members' desires. Some of those decisions, by sheer law of probability, will be of some benefit, but no amount of pleading from the community will make Gather what it once was. The train is out of the station, and we can either like where it's destined or jump.
Thank you for that comment more than you'll ever know!
I second those who are asking for a way to organize groups, as well as those who mentioned the phantom friend requests that need to be fixed.
Regarding the need to click on each individual name when sending a message--like others, I suspect there'll be a way around this, and we'll be seeing long lists of addressees.
There are people here who will do exactly that -- saying that this will "stop spam" is like saying "we told them not to spam anymore." Those who seem to think they need to beg for attention by mail will still do exactly that.
Thank you for not taking away the "Block Sender" button. With the next upgrade, will you please set that up so I don't have to open the message first?
"Sounds like good improvements; I like the idea of being able to invite friends from MySpace and Facebook. "
My response:
Oh...great. JUST what we need. (dripping sarcasm intentional).
I'm sorry I found Gather after it began it's every quickening slippery slope into the world of internet dating services. It sounds like at one point there was more of value here than points.
I was out of pocket for a few days and am excited to check new things out....
I have to click up to 3 times per screen to get it to move. I have clicked about 20 times and I am still on C.
I have 7,000 connections.
I am using my OUTSIDE EMAIL FOR ALL SENDING.
Please, Gather really needs to TEST THESE FEATURES WITH REAL USERS BEFORE HAND.
However, regarding sending messages to our friends, it would have been a better option if we could send group messages to a particular set of friends rather than having to click on one name at a time. Being able to sort email groups would reduce mass mailing and be a lot less time consuming.
I AM NOT USING GATHER MAIL. I HAVE 7,000 CONNECTIONS.
Also, this new SEARCH BY NAME is not working.
When I searched"Kathryn Esplin-Oleski" as instructed yesterday in the web conference, the results were Zero.
When I searched Kathryn Esplin-Oleski I got the results I had been getting - anything written by me about me or commented by me. Better than the supposedly new way.
That won't stop.
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EVEN THOUGH I WAS AT THE WEB CONFERENCE YESTERDAY, SOMEBODY NEEDS TO TELL US EXACTLY WHAT THESE FEATURES ARE, CAROLYN.
The ability to turn off feeds is great. The mail is not. I don't care about other social networking sites, so that doesn't concern me.
Spotlighting older content is great.
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APART FROM CLICKING ON YOUR LINK, CAROLYN - HOW DO PEOPLE FIND THE MEMBER SUPPORT FORM?
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Also, this new SEARCH BY NAME is not working.
When I searched"Kathryn Esplin-Oleski" as instructed yesterday in the web conference, the results were Zero.
When I searched Kathryn Esplin-Oleski I got the results I had been getting - anything written by me about me or commented by me. Better than the supposedly new way.
I send out occaisonal emails to several of my friends at a time like when I'm going to be away or such. Using the BCC is just good manners so they don't have to scroll down through a list of names. I'm talking about 20 or less, usually. Besides, maybe I don't want everyone to see who all else I sent the email to......
And I hate the type-in-the-word thingy. That's just plain annoying!
Those who are having trouble sending their mass emails to several thousand "friends" with the new system possibly need to reexamine both their definition of "friend" and the reason for the emails. I'm thinking many with that high a number are mostly using their "friends" as captive audiences for their prolific works - whether it is for points or exposure is irrelevant. It still would be considered overstepping the bounds of frienship in the real world, and probably also should be in cyberspace.