Last night Gather.com bounced all the members off the site for 4 hours so their development department could install their latest upgrade [upgrade is gather-speak for installing a new set of bugs!] Gather's codename for their latest release is Lemon, well, that is what the members are calling it, officially it is Lennon.
OK, so now we are back online -- what's new?
Here's what I have found so far:
1- There are a couple new links on the top of your personal home-page.So what do you think of the 'new' Gather?
The invite and email preferences are new to me.Hi, Altair
Gather Points™: ####
*share *invite *mail *my account *email preferences
Altair I'm just a figment of your imagination. - update status
2 - Now you can directly reply to comments and they are threaded.
All i can say is it's way long over-due! Comments on most sites have been collated and threaded as far back as text-only bulletin boards, why did it take Gather so long to get their act together on this feature?
3 - The comment box has new features to allow easy insertions of links and the ability to edit html.
I am just certain that these additions to commenting will in no way add to what the Director of Member Services refers to as - LITTER!
4 - You can now subscribe or "follow" a post or comment thread, getting email updates.follow this conversation by email
Just click on the link by the little envelop on top of the comment box.
As if there wasn't already enough junk-mail being spewed out by the Gather servers.
5 - Some cosmetic changes to a few pages.
Click on one of the tabs at the top of the page - People or Groups - or the Explore tab and then select - Posts Photos of Videos - and there are new page formats. Nothing particularly wonderful or any exciting new features. Curiously though, the old Gather Essentials logos are now prominently displayed in the right-hand column. Does this mean that after a year of Gather ignoring those channels they are coming back?
Even more curious is Gather's concept of "popular" when they list things such as posts, photos, groups, etc on these pages. Basically Gather does not understand the definition of "popular" or they are just impudent when it comes to applying the concept to their search algorithms. If you check out the "popular" groups you will find several listed that have only a couple dozen members and if you investigate one of these low-profile groups you will find they also don't have very much activity - posting and commenting - by their members, especially compared to some groups that are truly "popular" using the popular (and accepted normal) definition of the word.
6 - One HUGE omission in the upgrade - Gather again failed to address the issue with ratings!
Did you find any other new things?
0 comments:
Post a Comment