A marketing view on Gather.com
Lots of people are commenting on the article in the Boston Globe regarding Gather.com, which the Globe characterizes as a one-stop site for blogs. Comments I've read so far range from "they can't succeed because the dot.com 2.0 crash is coming" to "I like it". Personally, I was surprised to discover that a couple of my ex-Forrester colleagues -- specifically Susan Whirty and David Cooperstein -- are working there, and I certainly respect their work, so they aren't going to lack for talent.
But I think some of the critics may be onto something asking good marketing questions like, "How will these guys be different from the likes of Bloglines, Yahoo, and About.com?" to "How will they gather content that drives advertising?" In short, it's not really clear what Gather.com's target market is or what their marketing strategy is. These guys are in a market that has low barriers to entry and a tyranny of too much competition. The best way they could differentiate themselves would be to have a clear target market of writers and advertisers, to whom they could uniquely deliver value specific to that market. That would help them make their $6 million in VC money go a lot farther than a broad-brush approach. And while an article in the Boston Globe is a great start, they'll need to spend a lot more sweat and dollars on marketing down the road before they will be successful.
Having just signed up for the Newsvine beta, who seems to both have a clearer target market of readers as well as a clever-if-not-original buzz marketing plan of referrals, Gather.com is going to have serious competition, even if the Web 2.0 bust doesn't happen. At the moment, Gather.com doesn't seem to offer me enough to get me to put content on their site. Let's hope I'm not representative of their target market.
But I think some of the critics may be onto something asking good marketing questions like, "How will these guys be different from the likes of Bloglines, Yahoo, and About.com?" to "How will they gather content that drives advertising?" In short, it's not really clear what Gather.com's target market is or what their marketing strategy is. These guys are in a market that has low barriers to entry and a tyranny of too much competition. The best way they could differentiate themselves would be to have a clear target market of writers and advertisers, to whom they could uniquely deliver value specific to that market. That would help them make their $6 million in VC money go a lot farther than a broad-brush approach. And while an article in the Boston Globe is a great start, they'll need to spend a lot more sweat and dollars on marketing down the road before they will be successful.
Having just signed up for the Newsvine beta, who seems to both have a clearer target market of readers as well as a clever-if-not-original buzz marketing plan of referrals, Gather.com is going to have serious competition, even if the Web 2.0 bust doesn't happen. At the moment, Gather.com doesn't seem to offer me enough to get me to put content on their site. Let's hope I'm not representative of their target market.
Technorati Tags: Bloglines, Blogs, Gather.com, Marketing, Web, Web 2.0
