Exciting news for those of us who swear by new media's "Social Networking" as a way to grow our business relationships one person at a time is that the Gather online community was featured - page ONE no less - in yesterday's Boston Globe.
And the Gather community - made up of close to ten thousand individuals writers, artists, techies, moms and just plain regular folks including me - and hopefully you too - is tickled pink.
But what does that Globe article mean for us as online networkers, community - builders, colleagues and old and new friends?
To me and others it means that the traditional media is noticing that we hold a significant collective power as a community. Not bad for a bunch of regular people.
And as tech entrepreneur and founder of the Gather.com online community Tom Gerace writes, we are:
. . transforming the way media is created, organized and shared. . . . giving voice to thousands that, in the old model, stood silently before their newspapers and television sets unsure of how to speak.
Good plan from where I sit. Call me picky but if this means I can ignore perfect Paula Zahn, the annoying Lester Holt and the frick and frack of political slice and dice - Hannity and Colms - I'm a happy woman.
Gerace sees Gather as more than an opportunity for bloggers to find a place for their opinions and closer to a social networking site - but a site for an older and more sophisticated audience as opposed to that teenage blogger fave "MySpace".
I certainly agree with that . . but then again, I liked Gather from day one.
