The problem with this article - and why Guiliani has failed to get more than 35 connections on Gather is simple - Gather members join and interact, connect, post original content, and comment on only each other's work - and that has to be a real person - not a surrogate. If Guiliani himself was actually posting original content - along the campaign trail, and interacting with the Gather community, as well as commenting on other people's articles and making and effort to connect with conservatives and others on Gather himself - he would find himself a lot more popular.

This is the huge difference between Gather and sites like Facebook - Gather is all about actually developing a dialog between members. The high school and college type facebook or myspace friends concept where you connect, but never interact - is completely missing from Gather.

Having spent some time on Guiliani's Gather site - it becomes blatently clear why he has so few connections - someone - not him - has only posted one article, and it's a boilerplate type "commitment" to the American people. It is not personalized, and while 10 people commented on his "Commitment," Guiliani failed to respond to any of the comments. Gather is not just a "Push" or passive medium for people to show support. It's about dialogue, which means actually engaging with people. Not one reply from either the candidate or his surrogates. Clearly, the Guiliani camp just-doesn't-get-it.

If this was a well researched article - the author would have known this. Not all social networking sites are created equal.

myspace and facebook are, as far as i can tell, also far more popular among high school and college students. this sheer number of members combined with a different philosophy of networking make them better places for a campaign's attempts to network on the internet more likely to be successful.