2015. Empirical.
Gather crafts intimacy by allowing people to share content privately with individuals or groups, where all comments are short video reactions rather than written text. This allows for more meaningful and intimate interactions because content sharing is directly targeted (this link was shared ONLY with me by you) and because the share is accompanied by a short video of you explaining why you shared it with me. Further, I can then respond with a short video of my reaction.
Every detail of this interaction flow was carefully designed, from the small size of the video and live filters (to reduce insecurity) to the lightweight but deliberate selection of recipients.
At a technical level, Gather features some fantastic work to achieve fast loading times, insanely small video file sizes for fast uploading and downloading on poor networks, robust interactions for recording and playing, and aggressive caching that creates a surprisingly snappy experience.