You'll notice that Gather looks a little different today. We hope you enjoy the new experience. Read on to learn about the following highlights:
o New site navigation
o New My Gather page
o Enhanced Status Updates
New Site Navigation
We’ve revised the main site navigation to give you easy access to all of the things that you do on Gather. There are four main navigation items, and you can scroll over any of them to see the sub-navigation and then go to those areas of the site.
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Here are the main navigation items and the associated sub-navigation:
My Gather
o My Home
o My Profile
o My Posts
o My Photos
o My Videos
o My Comments
o Account Settings
o Email Preferences
Friends
o Make Friends
o My Friends
o Invite Friends
o Friend Sets
Groups
o Find Groups
o My Groups
o Create a Group
Share
o How to Share
o Posts
o Photos
o Videos
We've also added three other items to the main navigation: a task alert, a gather messaging alert, and your Gather Points.
The task alert in the site navigation displays an alert when you get friend requests or group invitations from other members, or if you have comments that you need to moderate. If you’re a group owner or moderator, an alert will also display when you have pending group moderation tasks. You can click on the task alert to see what you need to do and then just click any of the links to go to the page where you can perform the task. There is separate alert in the site navigation that tells you the number of unread messages you have in your Gather mailbox. You can click on this alert at any time to access your personal Gather private messaging mailbox. You can click the Gather Points link in the navigation to go to earnings.gather.com, where you can redeem your points.
Note that there are no longer Explore pages. You can access the most recent and most popular content on the new My Gather page in the All of Gather feed.
New My Gather Page
We’ve created an improved version of the My Gather page. If you joined Gather prior to September 25, by default, you will use the classic version, but you have the option of switching to the new and improved version on the Account Settings page.
The new My Gather page helps you keep track of the latest that’s happening with your friends, your interests, your groups, and all the other stuff on Gather that you care about. You can choose to see or not see any activity for any feed by checking or unchecking the activity checkboxes above that feed.
The My Friends Feed shows all of the latest comments, posts, photos, and videos shared by your friends. It also shows, by default, the member updates for your friends. These updates include the new friends they make, their profile updates, pings they leave and receive, and the groups they join, create, and add group comments to. To customize who you see in the friends feed, just click “settings” in the My Friends Feed area. Select the “selected friends” radio button to add and remove the friends you want to keep up with. Once you have customized who you can see in your friends feed, you can choose to see activities for all of those friend sets or for one of those friend sets by selecting it in the left-hand column.
The My Interest Feed shows all of the latest posts, photos, and videos shared on the topics that matter to you. Just enter a keyword into the search box located in the left-hand column below the My Interests Feed title, and you’ll get up-to-the-minute posts, photos, and videos about the stuff you love. Interested in reusing an interest that you entered? You can save the term you searched for to your interests feed. To customize your interests, just click “settings” in the My Interests Feed area. Enter up to 20 interests and put them in any order that you like. Once you have customized your interests, you can choose to see activities for all of your interests or for one of those interests by selecting it in the left-hand column.
The My Groups Feed shows you all of the latest posts, photos, and videos shared into the groups you are following. To customize the groups you include in the feed, just click “settings” in the My Groups Feed area. Select the “selected groups” radio button to add and remove the groups whose activities you want to keep up with. Once you have customized which groups you can see in your group feed, you can choose to see activities for all of those groups or for one of those groups by selecting it in the left-hand column.
The Gather Essentials Feed shows all of the latest posts, photos, and videos shared to the Gather Essentials groups. The Gather Essentials are moderated by the Gather staff and contain some of the most engaging content and conversations for the categories that they represent. You can choose to see all content for all of the Essentials or for one of the Essentials by selecting it in the left-hand column.
The All of Gather Feed shows all of the latest posts, photos, and videos shared on Gather. You can view all content shared on Gather, or you can just view the most popular content or Gather staff picks.
Enhanced Status Updates
Some users were experiencing problems when entering status updates on Gather, so we’ve modified the entry method on the new My Gather page. The new status update box on that page now allows you to share your status on Facebook and Twitter. Remember that your status lets people know what you’re doing. Update it frequently to keep your friends up to date.
Feedback and Questions
We hope that you enjoy these updates, and we are eagerly awaiting your feedback on the new My Gather page. Post your thoughts about these new features and enhancements on the release feedback post. If you're looking for help with any of these features, ask your questions on today’s help post in the help.gather.com group, or submit them through our Contact Member Support form.
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Comments: 9
A few members are experiencing smaller font on Gather since the upgrade. Font size was not intentionally changed and most members are not experiencing this. If you are - here are some suggestions:
Firefox browser: click on 'View' in the browser nav bar, then click on 'zoom'.
IE broswer: click on 'View' in the browser nav bar, then click on 'text size'.
I would suggest that postings to groups that include only title and no content are much less likely to be opened for more detailed viewing. Unless, of course, one is a master of "teaser titles."
It also precludes one from sharing the essence of what is being offered without the need to have the whole post opened. In the case of the haiku that is being shared here, that means the preponderance of the content previously offered will be missed unless the post is actually opened (which is also less likely).
This is pretty much based on the newspaper/newscast principle that puts the essence of the material on the first line or paragraph and/or the newscast introduction. Additionally, under the new format, the reader is given significantly less information to base his decision to open the post upon.
I hope I'm wrong, but I would expect a precipitous drop off in views (which have recently been averaging around 170 here) with regard to what is being offered here, as well as Gather-wide; however, the marketing guy in me says there probably will be.
I'll follow up after a few more posts to see if today's drop off is content related, but only one view an hour after a post is extremely unusual.
Something to keep in mind is that many members who use Gather on a regular basis spend much of their time after an upgrade getting used to the features. Regular Gather members may be the majority of your content viewers. Later in the day and over the next few days viewing content should get back to more normal rates - and we hope increase as members use their interest feeds to find haikus, for example.