Gather takes video conferencing and collaboration into the Metaverse. Gather provides a virtual layer over the real world that allows people to interact at a distance more naturally. Gather provides customizable “spaces” where participants can interact, similar to how they interact in a real space. Participants can enter and leave rooms using a UI that looks a bit like a retro video game. They can stop people they meet in the hallway for a quick chat or find someone for a quick conversation without scheduling a meeting. Compared to traditional video meeting applications, Gather Town is a whole new world.
Uses for Gather
One of the problems with video conferencing is that engaging and disengaging with other participants is awkward. You have to interrupt the meeting to ask someone to speak privately and then start another session. In Gather, you can approach someone and have a private chat or make a comment to the person next to you without interrupting the larger group.
Gather focuses on four use cases or solutions: remote work, conferences, education and social interaction. The main difference between the four solutions is the different space templates.
Remote Work
For remote work you can create a space that simulates your physical office, or you can create a fantasy office with moats and outdoor spaces. Each participant gets a desk that they can decorate. From your Gather office, you can easily hold a team meeting or chat with a coworker. You can share documents and work on a virtual whiteboard.
Conferences
You can have a main room, breakout rooms, an exhibition hall and more in a conference space. Participants can easily move from room to room or gather with a group in a corner. Presenters move up to the stage and they can share documents or their desktop. No fumbling to figure out who is presenting. Exhibitors can customize individual booth space with their own art and handouts, just as they would in a real-world conference.
Education
Teachers can create interactive classrooms. They can give a lecture to the whole class and then seamlessly divide the students into tables for small group projects. The teacher can pop from table to table to check-in and see how things are progressing.
Students also have control to create meetings, retreats, workshops for clubs or study groups, or chat with friends. There is even a provision for recess where students can take a break from their studies and play games.
Social Interaction
In Gather, it is possible to host celebrations for any occasion. You can create an event space with themed decorations and activities. Some users have created wedding venues and gotten married on Gather. It is also possible to create a watch party for games or movies.
There is no limit to the kinds of gatherings that users can host on Gather. One of the exciting things for the Gather creators is seeing what users come up with that the creators couldn't imagine.
How is Gather Different From Competitors?
Gather seems to have a different mindset than its competitors. Rather than just delivering a product to do a job, like video conferencing, Gather views the problem more holistically. While humans need to see each other's faces when apart, the more significant issue is creating a human connection. Gather works to find a way for people separated by physical space to interact in a way that resembles their in-person interactions.
Gather created an online paradigm that allows humans to behave online more like they do when physically together. The way we move and engage with one another in person is different than how we behave on a conference call with pictures. By envisioning the problem differently, Gather is bridging the gap.
There has been a lot of talk lately about the Metaverse and what it is. Gather is an implementation of the Metaverse that we can experience now. The Metaverse is an immersive online world where we can interact and build human connections in familiar ways to extend our experiences beyond what we can do in the physical world.
How is Gather Driving Change Rather Than Following the Pack?
Gather hasn't invented any groundbreaking new technology to enable the Metaverse. They have taken existing technologies and combined them in new ways to produce something disruptive with a grander vision. That doesn’t mean that they haven’t introduced innovative features or that there haven’t been technical challenges to overcome. One especially interesting feature is proximity chat. In the app, you have to be virtually “close” to someone to hear them, which allows for many conversations in one space and wonderful spontaneous interactions."
What Makes Gather Work Better?
A significant challenge for Gather—and anyone working on immersive, real-time applications—is the inherent limitations of the public internet. To overcome that challenge, Gather has partnered with Subspace, the fastest, most reliable, and most secure global network available.
"To power the kinds of meaningful, expressive, real-time interactions that are core to the Metaverse, you need reliable networking. The worst part of meeting people virtually is when you run into connection drops and lag. Unfortunately, we’ve found that the public internet lacks significantly in this regard — packet loss and general unreliability abound. Subspace fixes this with their overlay network. It allows us to make the Metaverse more accessible to people in all sorts of networking situations, all around the world." Kumail Jaffer, CTO at Gather
Subspace uses proprietary, AI-driven network technology to “weather map” the internet and find the fastest and most reliable path for data. By running Gather on Subspace, the things that interfere with real-time interactions and clear audio and video are virtually eliminated.
Conclusion
Gather has produced a game-changing product and you can try it out for free. Humanity has spent a long time learning to interact in person. Gather offers a way to interact online that adapts to us rather than demanding that we adapt to the technology. Gather's innovative approach, grand vision, and next-generation networking from Subspace offer a bright future for the Metaverse—and for interacting when we can't be side-by-side.
