senoritafish | (no subject) (Reply)

So I joined Gather.com about six months ago, and these were my thoughts when I joined:

...might as well check this place out. So, it's somewhat nicer-looking than MySpace, although still littered with ads. I can't really personalize my own page, but it's meant as a portal for others. A slightly different premise than LJ, I guess; it looks like it's really more geared to writing specifically for public consumption, whereas, when I started at LJ it was mostly for me, so I wouldn't forget stuff. The level of maturity seems to be a bit higher here as well (as far as age and the number of icons showing people with grey hair, anyway - emotional maturity is a whole 'nother story)- very little netspeak in evidence, thank gods.

Hmm, comments aren't threaded - inconvenient, but no more so than bulletin boards, I guess. Unfortunately, not drama-free, but I suppose that's impossible given human nature. So many Groups, and so many articles being posted to bunches of them - eek! Somewhat overwhelming, on first glance; two, I was added to automatically when signing up (or got a contest entry for doing so), but they seem interesting enough, although I'm too broke to travel much (except when work foots the bill), and the only place I travel by train lately is around Dismalland. I'm a little suprised that groups of a fannish nature seem to be somewhat in the minority - or maybe I just haven't looked around enough. What, more bribes just for participating? Well, I'd do it for free, but ok - although that seems to imply they have to pay people to stay here... I'd appreciate it if I could edit my tags, but I guess I can live with it.

I've been a member of Gather.com for about six months now, and although I don't post a whole lot there, or even comment very much, I have enough points for for a $10 Borders or Home Depot card or I could donate it to KPCC (I'd rather KCRW, but that choice isn't offered). About half that is due a recent promotion wherein you got 10 pts. per picture posted. Better than a swift kick in the keester, I suppose. I could've got more but I thought it ended sooner than it did. However, this promotion resulted in people posting a lot of crap (mine included I suppose), just for the points - there are a lot of pictures posted anyway

However, I am so used to the way LJ works, that navigating around that site is kind of uncomfortable for me. I find I really dislike have to check back to see if a comment I made had any response to it and there no way to save posts I'd like to return to unless I bookmark it. Articles and images by people who have friended you show up on your "My Gather" page, but groups only show up as a logo when an article has posted there; you actually have to go to the group page to see artcle titles. You can be notified of all of these changes by email, but so far that's resulted in a bunch of email (luckily in my Gather folder so it can be deleted easily) on articles that I'm not likely to read. I suppose I could set up an RSS feed or something, that might make it easier.