Make Friends with Gather At

gather.at is live now

2006-08-31T03:32:44Z

OK. There were a few very frustrating false starts. I was concerned that with all the hiccups we might have lost some momentum. I know I personally felt really bummed out that things weren’t moving at the speed I’d expected it to. But thats fine, the site is running now, I hope to have all the FAQ’s and HOWTO’s online soon. Its not very complicated at all, signup, import your friends, organize and event and yours friends will receive a notice when you have an event. Simple. Building it…not so simple. Everyone should be receiving an invite today/tonight. Please check your SPAM/Junk mail folders if you do not receive it by tomorrow morning.

Gather at in Japan

2006-08-10T18:39:12Z

I'm traveling around the world in search of the secrets of making lasting relationships. My first stop was Japan the country that inspired me to build my gather at project. I met with old friends and made new friends.

What social networks can't replicate

2006-07-29T04:06:17Z

Gather at is not a social network. Social networks treat individuals as nodes and I refuse to treat my friend as a node. Relationships are complex just like people and they can't be simplified into bits and bytes. If you want strange friends sign up for myspace. You are guaranteed at least one friend, some guy named Tom. What does it mean to be one of Tom's 96,981,816 friends? I've realized two things so far during my trip to Japan. Directly inviting people you have never met before to a dinner is very nerve wrecking. Its actually against gather at rules to do this, but I did it anyway and now I remember why the rule exist. There is a lot of social pressure when you invite strangers. For one the stranger may look at other strangers in the group and wonder how much I value their friendship if I invited more than one person you didn't actually know. Second, it throws off the vibe a little with the rest of the group. I've found that the ideal solution is to embrace the stranger, introduce them to the group explain that this is the first time meeting and tell everyone at the same time, why you specifically invited this person. You need to remind them that there is a reason for why you want to see them and let the group realize this. Lastly, because you don't actually know strangers, they might not actually show up. When you invite people through friends there is more social pressure to keep your commitments. Strangers could care less. And generally its very nerve wrecking to have people not show up. Something I felt while organizing gatherings here has convinced me more than ever that gather at is not a social network. I realized how the power of introduction can be so life changing. When you take an old friend, introduce them to another old friend and watch as those two slowly connect and become friends themselves. When you sit back and watch people in your social group having a great time, playing and interacting with each other its an amazing feeling. And for all its glory and hope the Internet will never be able to replicate the feelings I have when I see that. Could I build a machine that allows me to plant flowers over the Internet? Sure, but I would never feel the joy of watching that flower grow, smelling it and seeing the complexity of its colors with my naked eye. Gather at can be a bit of a ego trip for the organizer because you become the center of your social circle but when you see these human interactions, its very emotional and appeals, at least to me, on a very different level. You can not nurture a node but you can nurture a friendship.

First thoughts, back in Japan

2006-07-20T21:25:58Z

I arrived in Japan yesterday and I’m trying to make a conscious effort to relax. I’ve been in a state of panic over the last two weeks trying to make sure the gather.at site was ready. Its not, but everyone has been working super hard to make it so. I’d like to think it’s only a matter of hours away from being ready for public beta but I’ve decided to stop making predictions. Why did I come to Japan to launch gather.at? The time I lived in Japan changed my life in so many ways. Before moving to Japan I had a very limited number of friends. I was always the youngest person at every company I worked at and I hadn’t gone to college. Two of the most common places people make friends outside of the friends they grew up with. I lost all of the friends I grew up with, we took different paths. My path lead me to moving out of the neighborhood very young, and before that I was too immersed in computers to really maintain the childhood friends I had. I always had this sense, after I got into computer that they didn’t understand me anyway. But Japan was different. I easily made friends with foreigners who had absolutely no interest in technology. We had a common bond as fellow ex-pats. I made friends with Japanese guys in my gym who though we came from different cultures and backgrounds we had a common bond in martial arts. I made friends in bars too common bond? Alcohol, the grease of conversation. And we went out all the time. It was the single most social time of my life and when I returned to America I wanted to continue that lifestyle. In Japan technology didn’t drive interaction for me, people did. Friends introducing each other. Going to sporting events, going to bars it wasn’t about technology it was about interaction. Human interaction. But in America I see a very different trend and it really upsets me. Myspace, orkut and all of these “social networks” continue to drive a wedge between human interactions. It started with semi-anonymous online dating and that trend has migrated to social networking websites too. The concept of treating your relationships as landing pages…I hate it. Gather.at is about human interaction, around mutual interest through mutual friends. The application that helps organize this human interaction is online but that’s the only thing digital about it. It’s about me getting back to the feelings of joy I had in Japan. The pleasure I got from hanging out with friends and simply enjoying each other’s company. So obsessed with work lately I’ve forgotten what that feels like. I’d forgotten why this was so important to me, and I needed to return to Japan to remember. But the dinner I had in NYC before I left, the dinner I had with friends last night in Osaka and the many more dinners I have coming up…they are slowly reminding me about why I started this project and why I am convinced that to have and nature 10 real friends is more valuable than 1000 virtual. To be around friends, that’s why I started this.