Gather.com this week launched their site, a social networking site consisting of a set of blog-based communities. Gather’s approach is to create communities of user-created content (blogs, podcasts and such), and also can be the online host for existing offline communities such as a book club. Gather’s twist is that they have assembled a group of contributors to public radio stations to author content. So, when you post your blog to Gather, it could easily be commingled with content with audio from Minnesota Public Radio or the “Featured album of the week” from WXPN radio in Philadelphia.
Gather’s business model is serving up ads alongside the content. To gain user participation, Gather has a ranking system. Users rank the postings that they read, and contributors whose postings are read most frequently or get the highest ratings get “points” which can be converted to merchandise via Gather partners.
What I like about Gather is that it’s reinforcing the concept of tagging content. The communities are built based upon tags, so the better you tag the content, the more likely it will be read. I don’t fully get the public radio connection, except that it might target certain demographic groups. Gather’s Board includes several executives from their lead investor - American Public Media Group (parent of Minnesota Public Radio), and should have credibility within that community, but I’m not sure what value that adds to a social networking site.
We seem to be entering version 2.0 of the online community world, and I still think there will be many more failures than successes. Just as in the real world, online communities need to have a sense of purpose. While a community like MySpace might address the needs of teenagers seeking to share indie music, I’m not sure that easily translates to the public radio demographics. Only time will tell.
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