Claiming to be the eBay of user-driven media, Gather.com announced the public launch of its new blogging platform, a sort of coffee house for bloggers and readers, collecting content on a variety of topics under a single, organized platform.
On Gather.com’s platform, members organize content by topic, quality, popularity, and timeliness, thus, the company says, making it easier to find topics readers are interested in. The goal is to connect audiences and writers, taking advantage of a centralized platform that may have an advantage over a standalone blog, where publishers may go unnoticed.
“User-driven media today is similar to where user-driven retail was before eBay. With thousands of disconnected, individual shops, it was hard to find the stuff you wanted; if you found it, you didn’t know if you could trust it; and if you decided you could trust it, you couldn’t comparison shop,” said Gather.com’s founder and CEO Tom Gerace.
“The blogosphere suffers from these same challenges. What eBay did for user-driven retail, Gather.com does for content.”
Gather.com members are given user-specific URLs for their space. For example, Lewis “Scooter” Libby could get scootersnotastupidname.gather.com. Even though it is.
“I can see how people react to what I write, and then see what they have written, and learn from that what interests them. Gather.com captures, in a very appealing and sensible way, the free spirit and fun that once made the entire internet so attractive to people.” said Michael Middleton, magnumoafus.gather.com, of Summit, N.J.
The company says that prior to today’s launch, user-driven media did not have a clearly articulated business model and that the best writers had difficulty acquiring a significant audience, demonstrating credibility, and monetizing their blogs. By putting blogs under one roof, Gather.com hopes to bring an established audience to the blogger, where community ratings will establish credibility.
Quality and popularity of blogs dictate Gather.com’s integrated advertising and reward systems for blogger compensation. Membership is free.
