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September 07, 2005
Gather.com - Social Networking For Public Radio Listeners
Posted by Stowe Boyd
"It's not what you know, it's who you know." That maxim is probably at work in the recent investment of Minnesota's "largest public radio network" in Gather.com, a social networking service targeting public radio listeners. The service, to be launched in December, is meant to be a clone of the socially architected hit, MySpace:
Deborah Caulfield Rybak, Star Tribune
[from
MPR parent invests in networking website]
However, Gather may be different. MySpace caters to teens and young adults and has been described as having the personality of a teenager's poster-papered, music-filled bedroom. Gather, designed for public radio's older, more sober audience, might more resemble the parents' book-lined study.
Well, we'll see. Do you really want to network with people because they listen to the same radio shows as you?
MySpace benefitted from stumbling across a real-world community with unmet needs: indie musicians and their fans. While I am an advocate for social architecture -- in fact, I believe that all ecommerce will be socialized in the future -- that doesn't mean that every marketer's segment, like public radio listeners -- are in fact a community. It's just as likely that they are a collection of unintegrated groups. My hunch is that this is a hammer looking for a nail, but I am willing to be surprised.
[pointer from PaidContent]
Comments (2)
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1. Tom Gerace on September 10, 2005 04:49 AM writes...
First, thanks for noticing us, Stowe. I have been a Corante reader for a while and it was fun to see your mention of our first news blurb, despite the initial reservations.
I hope we will surprise you by the degree to which public radio listeners do congregate around shared interests. It happens today in the offline world. Take, for example, the Prairie Home Companion cruise (prairiehome.publicradio.org/features/cruise/ if you want to check it out). Here, you have a lot of people spending some real money to cruise together in part because they love the show, but in part because they enjoy the camaraderie with others who do.
I wouldn't argue that it's a homogeneous group, of course. Public radio has 30M listeners with diverse interests. Some of them enjoy public radio programming for the political commentary. Others for financial news. Some for automotive call-in comedy or midwestern down-home humor. And many, of course, will have overlapping interests and enjoy several of these things.
We started Gather because we knew that public radio listeners are bright and engaged. We knew that there was tremendous untapped perspective sitting on the receiving side of radio. We wanted to give this audience a place to share their perspective and create a rich experience for one another. And we believe that they will congregate around shared interests (multiple, overlapping interests) on Gather, doing in a two-way medium what they already enjoy on radio.
It's really, really early, Stowe, but we are starting to have a good time over at Gather. Please drop me a line, if you would like, and I will send you an invitation to our beta. We'd love to have you on board.
Permalink to Comment2. Stowe Boyd on September 10, 2005 07:26 AM writes...
Tom -
I think the example of the Prairie Home Companion cruise may be the example that proves the point -- PHC is an anomaly, an almost singular example. IN that circumstance, an online community may in fact fill an unmet need. Perhaps other exmaples, like Fresh Air, may come close as well, or The Klackett (Clackett?) Brothers.
I am interested in your grand experiment and would be happy to jump into the beta.
I am certain that public radio listeners would be benefitted by deeper and broader social ties, but I remain skeptical. I bet that other affiliations will prove stronger. For example, those who are ardent fans for a particular sports team or musical form will likely align around those interests rather than around a specific medium that informs them about their interest. But we'll see.
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