St. Louis on Twine

June 1st, 2008 | St. Louis, social networking, tools

Nope, I’m not talking about knitting! Twine is a new social aggregation site and now there’s a twine for St. Louis.

So what’s a twine exactly? A twine is a collection of items about something. Vague? Yeah. Once a twine is started on a subject, say St. Louis, Twine users can add things such as bookmarks, documents, notes, images and video under it. As time goes, the collection will grow.

Users become members of individual twines. Members can add more items to that subject’s twine as well as commenting on already added content. Members can also share items, such as bookmarks, with their contacts, or other twines.

Diversity in what can be shared on a subject sets this apart from a wiki. Instead of just links, actual descriptions and previews of those links are available, as well as member comments about those links. And it’s not just links. The ability to add documents and video contributes to that diversity.

Beyond diversity though is the ease of contribution. Members can contribute by adding a Twine bookmarklet, posting on the twine page, or sending an email in.

Twine content is enjoys another benefit. It’s able to be searched for the instant it’s entered. That’d be pretty interesting on its own, but Twine take it up a notch. They find key words in the content.

A great example is on the St. Louis Twine page. I added the Missouri Botanical Garden website to the twine. It not only picked up the tags from the entry, but also recognized that Henry Shaw is a relevant person. The Botanical Garden was actually founded by Henry Shaw. Amazing.

Will people really find this useful? I’m imagining that the more people have access and get involved, the better a twine will be. There are already twines with hundreds of members and even more links and items.

So now you’re ready to get involved but you need an invite. I can help you there. Just drop me line with your email address and mention Twine and I’ll send you one. Once you’re in, invite your friends. You receive plenty of invites to pass on.

See you on Twine!