Creating a social site that caters to grown-ups

Another social networking site on the Internet? Haven't the giants of the business, MySpace and Facebook, sucked all the oxygen out of that market? Boston entrepreneur Thomas Gerace thinks there's plenty of room for a social site for literate grown-ups, and he discussed with the Globe's Hiawatha Bray how his company, Gather.com, targets an older audience.

Q Aren't there enough social networking sites to go around?

A When we set out to build Gather, I think it was obvious that the market was going to become crowded for the younger set -- for high school kids, for college kids, for those in their early 20s. What we really wanted to do, though, was create an experience that was right for adults.

Our demographic is typically 30 to 60 years of age. Our median age is about 42 on the website. We've got people who are writers. We've got people who are exploring how to live healthy lives, or if they've got a chronic disease, how to overcome that chronic disease. We've got people on the site who are connecting on parenthood. Those are things you just don't see on a MySpace or a Facebook.

Q American Public Media Group helped finance the launch of Gather, and some say your site has a public radio sort of tone to it.

A That was a great start in the sense that we were able to start with an audience that was an engaged, informed demographic, which listened to National Public Radio. The biggest difference we have between Gather and other sites is the Gather community.

We have a community of engaged, informed adults who are authors and doctors and political leaders and people who care passionately about living full lives and creating a better world. Now, they disagree often about what it means to create a better world, particularly in our political forums.

We map almost to the percent the national breakdowns for people who say they lean conservative, lean liberal, or moderate. Same thing for party affiliation.

Q Still, NPR is regarded by many as a haven for political liberalism.

A We've gone out and actively tried to balance it. So we worked to bring in the American Conservative Union. They did live chats on the site and invited their membership in. When we reached out to early candidates on our website, two of the best, frankly, have been Mike Huckabee and -- he's not running yet, but he may -- Newt Gingrich.

Q How do you attract the kinds of members you're looking for?

A You've got to start with a seed audience. We were very thoughtful about the partnerships we create to build that audience. A great one is Borders. Borders has selected us as their social platform. Simon & Schuster was an early one as well. We built a relationship with Borders because they have an audience that reads and they reach 18 million people. Their Borders reward card is an 18-million-person e-mail list.

We've begun to work to reach out to campaigns on both sides of the aisle. We're inviting all the presidential candidates to come and join the conversation and also to activate their base by bringing them in and having them contribute content.

Q But Gather has a lot more than political content. You've got areas that focus on health, travel, food, and other things. How do people with such interests learn about you?

A By far the biggest engine of growth for us now is members inviting members. Our members send out tens of thousands of invitations every week, and it's a terrific engine of growth.

Q You also hold contests for new authors where the winner gets his book published by Simon & Schuster. How does that help you find an audience?

A When we wanted to go into books, we said, Let's go out and get an author community and they'll bring a reader community with them. That's exactly what happened: 2,676 authors entered our contest and submitted full manuscripts for their books, and 65,000 people voted in the contest, most of whom were brought in by these authors.

Q Given Gather's more mature approach, can it develop a really big mass audience?

A I think we have a huge opportunity here, and we're growing into it. We're 10 times the size we were a year ago. Now we're adding tens of thousands of people to the site every month and accelerating our growth.

Advertisers on the site are really different from what you see on MySpace and Facebook: Starbucks, American Express, Charles Schwab, MasterCard.

Schwab sponsors our money forum, for example. Expedia sponsors our travel forum. Amex might put student cards on Facebook, but they can put out their platinum card and their gold card on Gather.

The viewing audience passed a million people [last month], so we're able to go out to much larger advertisers.

When you hit a million people, you're interesting to advertisers, and their agencies can begin to pay attention to you.

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.