Blogsonomy gathering
Simply put Gather seems to be a blogsonomy, a place where you can have your own generic blog within a folksonomy environment…ok, it isn’t your own blog, but more a space to publish articles, eg. someones published articles…here is their user space, where it also shows recent articles, comments, connections, and subscriptions.
Also to note is that each article you publish has it’s own permalink (this is an important aspect of a blogsonomy)
So you can publish articles (file in a system category and apply personal tag/s), comments on articles, and apply ratings to articles.
Here’s what you see in aggregation:
Browse by topic (eg. here’s the category “Movies & Films”)
Tags (eg. here’s the tag “blog”)
Ratings
Rankings
- Top tags: most viewed, most commented on, most used (this last one is a weighted tag list, not quite a tag cloud)
- Top articles: most read, highest rated, most commented on
- Top contributors: most read, highest rated, most articles, comments written, comments received, namespace views
So as you can see there is a lot of ways at looking at the aggregated data, just the way we love it.
Here is a page that aggregates some of this stuff:
Editor’s pick
Top rated articles
Most read authors
Top Tags
Popular comments
Recent comments
When you view an item, you can click on the title to take you to the permalink, subscribe to the author (have to be logged in), view the ratings, view and click on the tag/s, view and click on the category/s, view the comments (and click to the user account of a commentor)…you can also give a rating, make a comment.
You have to be logged in to make comments, apply ratings, even subscribe, so this makes this a very enclosed system…this may not suit some web2.0 users, as many of us like being part of a community without being locked in or locked out.
Only thing missing for me is a tag cloud, and RSS feeds:
- lacks a general feed
- lacks general tag feed
- lacks a user feed
- lacks viewing tags or categories at the user level also no feed
(this would be like viewing a blogs category archives)
In all this is a great attempt at a blog folksonomy, for those who don’t want the hassle of having their own proper blog. I really like the many ways that you can look at the aggregtated data, only if there was RSS notification.
Actually I don’t see why the user page can’t be an actual blog presentation (with a sidebar to add your links, blogroll, etc)…even though it would have a generic display as it is part of a folksonomy.
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Comment by Seth Russell — November 21, 2005 @ 9:27 pm
Hey John- great explanation of Gather…thanks! The “tops” pages (top articles, top authors, top tags) will all be going down a level in our next release. That will let us show you the top articles on automotive or top authors on Umbria, for example. It will also show the top tags related to the topic “Politics” or tag “astronomy.” This is all based on our goal of leveraging community rankings to show the best stuff published by Gather members.
Your point in the last paragraph (why Gather.com’s personal space, like mine at tom.gather.com aren’t more customized or blog-like) is one we debate all the time. We are trying to walk the line between having a great user experience (with standardized navigation) and allowing bloggers ownership and freedom to create. Myspace falls on the other side of the divide, allowing almost total freedom. For now, we are keeping stuff pretty standard.
That said, Gather members lead and we follow…once we have the basics they requested complete, we will be looking for what the community thinks is the best way to present each author’s own space.
Anyway- thanks again for mentioning Gather.com — hope to see you there.
Comment by Tom Gerace — November 22, 2005 @ 1:18 am