Gather Update: What do you think?

Andrew- Thanks! I look forward to what folks have to say here. You may also want to submit this article to the improve.gather.com group where we focus on current and potential improvements to the Gather platform. To do that, first join the improve.gather group. Then edit this article and you will see the option to submit it there.

Hi Tom. I used it for a comment this morning - that was a first. The Twitter button was so seamless I didn't know it worked! (My twitter automatically goes to facebook. ) Until I went onto facebook to answer two comments about it, that is.
I've had an invitation to join gather in my signature file for years. I know people have joined because of it. So far I don't know of anyone joining because of my Twitter & facebook activity, but I know my views have gone up. That's what I wanted.

HA - here's a reply to my comment on a Gather article I was talking about:

Heather ~of the Whippets~ M. Sep 17, 2009, 1:39pm EDT
I've never heard of black garlic, either. I saw your tweet, and I just had to come over and see what you were talking about.

This is the most worthless reason for an upgrade that I've ever seen!

I didn't think you were on other networking sites. whoopee!

Well, for members I don't really see much of a benefit. At least before last night's upgrade the amount of points earned for outside views was next to nothing. Unless that part of the point process was tweaked last night, then there won't be much of a benefit for us.

For Gather I see the potential for a lot more advertisement impressions, which would equate to more revenue. Since June, it seems to be Gather's business model to sell more ads and charge more for advertising here. Gather has never cared about retaining existing members, but has always pushed for new members. So this fits with all that quite well.

Yes, two of my Facebook friends have joined Gather since I began linking some of my photo content on my Facebook page. I've also had other friends from FB view pages of photos in my gallery after clicking through one FB posted image.

Sorry Sassy, I had to add to my comment since we still can't EDIT existing comments around here

I like the idea. And certainly, as we share, more people will see the articles here. But I don't think just posting comments is going to be all that interesting on Twitter or Facebook, most of the time, unless they already know what we're talking about. I still like it, though.

I think it's an interesting way to bring in our friends from other social networking websites so they can join the other conversations we're having.

I don't really think of thins on the site in terms of how it's benefiting me - it serves it's purpose so long as I can communicate with other people. The points system is just a bonus.