Why do you Gather?

Just to answer the question myself--I've gotten some good response to posting freebies (books we've reviewed and raffled off). And I've made a few connections with people at a moderately personal level, to the point of exchanging a message or three (as opposed to the mass emails people like to send out promoting their latest article).

GUD does not get very much traffic via gather, and my posts here, other than the freebies, seem to generally be ignored. I don't spend a lot of time here, though I do try to make reasonable comments on others' posts from time to time.

Most of our traffic comes from sites like duotrope and ralan's, and that's understandable--that's people looking to find places to publish--they have something, and they want to sell it to us. As for social networking sites, the majority of our hits come from MySpace, to date. Sales... we've probably also made more sales from sites like duotrope and ralan's, so far. But we're trying to "get our name out", and that, in theory, is not all about immediate sales...

Yuwie... would be nifty if it took off--at the moment it comes across more as an MLM than a social network--but those are the people it's attracting the quickest, in general, and they're also the most vocal--people who want to invite other people to the site to make money while chatting. I'm reserving judgment at the moment. ;)

As for Facebook, a friend recommended I try marketing through it just recently--it's less friendly to casual "spam" than MySpace, but in theory the connections you make are stronger, and thus better. We'll see--I ran into someone who was in the process of reading and reviewing us, and I hadn't even been aware that they'd have a copy. So that's a pretty cool start. :)

I was introduced to gather from a coworker and since I joined nearly a dozen or so others have joined as well. It is great to earn the GCs and I have made a number of aquaintences (SP?) and look forward to what they post daily. I have not tried the other sites, despite that the rest of the world does myspace. It just seems very kiddish to me.
Good luck with the book. hope I answered some of your questions.

Have you redeemed much through Gather? I've been here a few months, but just don't seem to post enough to get anything. I suppose if my friends were here instead of (mostly) on livejournal, that would be a great impetus for sticking here, and chatting more (and earning points, etc). MySpace... it's a huge grab bag. The one positive thing for MySpace, as far as marketing goes, is that people _expect_ a certain amount of self-promotion. I appreciate the response!

I don't know. There is something about being able to post any article or pic but I am so tired of everything being flagged.

Why not? It's entertaining, there are good articles, some really good photographers and generally good fun most of the time.

I'm here for the personal relationships I've made, pretty much.

It's fun

I come back so very often because I love the community aspects here and I've made a lot of friends and it's a great place to look at articles and find interesting things and look at gorgeous photos and everything. It's got everything I could ever want and then some. :)

I came to Gather through Bzz Agent, and I have come to LOVE it. It is the best social networking site that I have ever been involved with. I love the concept, and the people that I have met.

I Gather because I like practicing my writing, even if it's in short increments. And I love to look at pictures and read stories. I have met lots of interesting people from various backgrounds, and that's probably my favorite part. I also like the points.

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I came to gather to write my blog. Soon after I joined I was asked to become a paid gather correspondent and I've earned some good money here as a blogger in the past few years that I've been a member. I take the money I earn here as cash, it's part of my income.

With gather now trying to recreate itself in the image of the idiotic and nutso myspace and facebook IMHO it is losing the audience they sought out. Intelligent people who were already writers who could write interesting content that others would want to read and comment on. Now I'm seeing articles written by people who can't put two correctly-spelled and thought-out words together. The quality of writing has slid downhill faster than an olympic downhill skier. Without a front page it's close to impossible to find articles by writers unless I waste more time trying to find them some other way.

Sorry friends, but I really don't care what you are doing at this very moment. I don't care what your favorite color is and I don't care who your friends are and I don't want you to ping me with stupid comments that have no content and come from little reality. When gather made it's first step towards dumbing itself down I took my entire profile down and only added a link to my content.

Gather has dumbed itself down just like the US Justice Department to compete with other social networking sites (which I'm a member of, but rarely use because they are such a boring and painful waste of time: myspace, facebook, linkedin, plaxo, twitter, ryze, friendster, xanga, fotolog, etc) so they can make a big sale to a place like google. I can literally see the wheels in the gather PTB heads turning right now...after all, gather begins with a G.

Yeah, things have gotten a little bit confusing here as of late. . .

Maybe writing articles isn't enough--maybe what Gatherers needed to do was continue to bring in more people, and that wasn't happening. I will read on why this new layout needed to exist, and why body content aren't called articles any more as I imagined they would be, but "posts".

Like maybe they should actually try to promote gather. If you google the words "social networking" gather's name will not pop up on most of the sites that list all of the social-networking sites.

IMHO Gather is thinking backwards, rather than forwards. They were unique. But now they are dumbing themsleves down in order to somehow compete with the more successsful SN sites. Dream on gather. Look what happened to CBS when they dumbed down their news and took Dan Rather off as anchor and added dimwit morning host Katie Couric who wouldn't recignize a follow-up question if it ran up and bit her in the ass. Now CBS news is watched by fewer people all over the world. Way to go CBS.

Way not to go gather!

Interesting stuff--I don't use gather enough to notice the changes (I liked the conceit of "article", but by the time I came around, I think, most things I saw weren't in the shape of an article by any stretch. Too many games, too many random communities, too hard to find the "good" ones. I think it's fallen to "just another social network"ism, where their strong suit may have been the whole moderation aspect of things.

Still, I know plenty of people are still very active here; and many of them _do_ create new and interesting content.

Then please come n read my work Kaolin. My weekly HOLLYWOOD POV column comes out late Thursday.

I joined another community and enjoyed it. Unfortunately, there was very little discussion, mostly mindless comments. I found real content on Gather. I do my socializing, too, but I can read good writing, participate in real discussions as well as connect with new people about things that interest me.

I joined here for the points. But I stayed for the people. I enjoy coming on here and seeing what is posted. I've made a few friends that I really enjoy reading their posts and come back a few times during the day.