Gathering Irony

The most coveted spot in today's Boston Globe goes to Gather.com. The front page, top left corner contains an article about this Boston-based startup that promises to act as a marketplace for bloggers.

As it's messaging goes, kind of like an eBay for writers.

It's an interesting concept and I'm interested to see where it goes. But what most fascinates me is how I heard about it. Not from a podcast like For Immediate Release, or any of the dozens of blogs I read, but from the old "Dead Trees" newspaper.

The reason for this is pretty simple: a key backer is Jim Manzi, former CEO of Lotus and a local legend. Even if I spent hours on the phone with Robert Weisman talking about one of my client startups (especially one that can't show much by way of traction) it wouldn't get this kind of treatment.

But why would a blog-like site do traditional some pre-launch media relations? They already have writers, but when I did a quick Technorati search, there just wasn't that much out there yet. I'm not feeling the buzz. I just find the irony in that somewhat interesting.

Perhaps they engage a bit more in some Open Communications.