Based in Boston and started by former e-mail marketing entrepreneur Tom Gerace, Gather.com is about to celebrate its one-year anniversary, with American Public Media Group as a key investor and supporter. Gerace boasts about the site's new blue-chip advertisers like Volvo and Starbucks (SBUX) and rising traffic. Rising maybe, but not exactly taking the Web by storm. According to comScore, it had just 77,000 unique visitors as of September, 2006. Compare that with the 173 million for MySpace and you get a sense of the conundrum facing Gather: Do grownups really want a place to hang online?
Business Week