Gather Review

http://www.gather.com/

Overall 4.00 of 5 view all 5 reviews

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senoritafish
Huntington Beach, CA

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Lots of great people and articles, but a bit akward to use

daily computer user, into trying new things, environmentally minded, Internet Addict, an internet networker

Pros

Earn points for gift cards or cash, publish your writing, join groups or make your own, wide range of topics, Promotions add to point earnings, free!

Cons

no threaded commenting, no personalized formatting, email notify can get overwhelming, Content vs. point earning, ads

DEC

2007

"Gather is a leading social networking and media site for adults, with some of the highest quality user-generated content on the internet. Becoming a Gather member will not only be personally rewarding, but it can also be profitable. Just for your participation, you will earn Gather PointsTM, which can be redeemed for gift cards to well-known merchants or for charitable donations. Active members may even earn cash!"

I discovered Gather.com through MyPoints; actually they bribed me to join. ;)

Gather touts itself as being for grownups, but like most of these places, you only have to be thirteen to join. However, the average age of members does seem to be a bit older, which is rather refreshing. There is one member I see regularly who is in her eighties! There is a lot of good content here, however, like most places like this, there's a lot of drek, too. A good place to find the stuff you're interested in is the front page, where various topics, groups and members are featured on a daily basis.

Gather is free, and in fact rewards you for posting and commenting and receiving commentary on your posts. You can post text, images, and video. Some people use it as a blog, others use it for serious writing, others are there strictly for the points (as a matter of fact, there's a bit of a schism between members of the two latter categories). If you put in the time, the points can pile up rather quickly - you can cash them in for gift cards, donate to various charities (rather limited), or, if you can accumulate 3,000 points within a month, a $50 cash option.

Because Gather is free, there are ads on every page, however, no more than your average news site, certainly less in number and obtrusiveness than MySpace. However, for the same reason, you can't opt out of them by paying a membership fee, as you can at places like LiveJournal or DeviantArt.

There are no options for personalizing your own page, except for your user picture. You can post whatever you want, but since the place is geared toward earning points, I've always gotten the impression everything is for public consumption - although you can make your posts friends-only or private, if you like. I seem to post more images than writing, since I seem to get more comments on them (and of course, they are faster to post).

It can be a fun place, and there are lot of intelligent people posting there. There are also quite a few members who are trying to supplement their income by posting things like "Game: Words that start with B" instead of something actually interesting to read. And of course, people posting actual content often take issue with this; drama crops up everywhere people interact. The ideal, of course, is getting a large readership by posting good content.

You needn't be worried about how to meet people - when I joined people began adding me out of the blue. A lot of it is due to the point system; there are a lot of people want to get their contacts list as large as possible, as quickly as possible. and they may not have even looked at your profile before they did. Quite a few of these will send out private messages to their entire contacts list every time they post something - some people like this, but it's easy enough to either block the sender or turn off your email notifications, if you don't.

Groups exist on almost every topic, and if you can't find what you want, you can create your own - I have no idea whether owning a group contributes to your points, but they are great ways to get your articles in front of more members. The converse is that in very busy groups, your content will get buried very quickly.

My major beef with Gather is the lack of threaded commenting. As a six-year Live Journal user, I find it very confusing to follow who is talking to who in flat comment lists.

All in all, though, a pleasant enough place to interact with other people, with the added incentive of a gift card now and then. Better than a poke with a sharp stick.