For those who are unaware, Gather is changing again. It appears it's happening tonight and this is the listing of changes I received from Jennifer here at Gather:
Hi Jennifer,
Because you are a valued Gather member, I wanted to reach out to you personally with a brief overview of Gather's next major upgrade. Next week, Gather will introduce a site redesign focusing on ease of use and a simplified navigation. We believe these changes will help make the site more user-friendly and intuitive.
Here's a look at some of the features:
• There will be four major tabs at the top of the page instead of a busy toolbar.
• Page layout will feature two columns instead of three.
• There will be a Universal Search on all content types including people and groups.
• Creating a group will be easier than ever.
• Language across the site will be simplified.
• A simplified sign-up page that will include your icon when you invite friends and family to join you on Gather. When they do join Gather, you will automatically be connected as friends.
• Your my Gather page will become your new Homepage.
• The current editorially driven homepage will be exchanged for dynamically changing landing pages that reflect what's happening and what's popular in the community at any given moment.
Vice President of Member Experience Pam Johnston will be publishing a series of in-depth articles about the site redesign in the days to come, so be sure to stay tuned.
Two articles have been published on this update you can find them Here and Here.
how do YOU feel about these updates? How do you feel about the changes they are reflecting in Gather? And more importantly, what brought YOU to Gather in the first place?
I'm not sure on the updates. As a whole I don't see anything I really hate, though "Hiding" the featured content in a tab rather than on the homepage is a bit unsettling to me. I came here for the CONTENT and the focus on WRITING and PHOTOGRAPHY.
How about you?
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I can understand waiting to see what they are really like as well.
I thought it was an advertisement for a "swingers" site.Ahh, I am not wild about the coming upgrade because I don't think that enough backend things are being done to manage dynamic content for starters. I also don't think there is anyone at gather who really cares about member experience enough to have some pre-release functionality shortcuts, between what we have currently and what we will be going to.
Maybe I should ask Tom for a job. He certainly has a few I could do ;-)
Gather's focus has always been on the next member...not the current ones.
Twister! Now THAT's fun. Hmm wonder if that was their aim?
For God's sake stop your griping and adapt. Nothing is gained by bitching and complaining.
Well, that isn't really true Thomas. If you look back on the initial Hawthorne upgrade, all of the bitching and complaining really did have a positive impact on Gather's functionality and the member experience for all. It was only due to these complaints that changes were made.
I suppose if we all hate it they will come up with a photo points thing like the one they did last year.
Half of the time I think the promotions are just to force us into a new gather - to actually use it, instead of only complaining about it.
"Not real sure how I feel about Kevin's cpmment here."
I'm not clear on how I can expound upon that?
Actually what I would like is to see less lag on the site.
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