Pearltrees 2.0 is out!
Today we’re introducing Pearltrees 2.0, a major evolution of Pearltrees that makes it simpler, more beautiful and more accessible than ever. With this new version you’ll be able to organize, explore and share everything you like with even more power and ease.
Let us introduce you to the “Dynamic Grid”, the “Extended Drag-and-Drop”, “full HTML5” and several other surprises we’ve prepared for you in this version!
The “Dynamic Grid” – A stunning new design
This new format lets you organize and display things however you want! It makes your interests easier to read and share, while keeping all the organizational benefits of Pearltrees. It has been designed for organizing, exploring and sharing collections!
“Extended Drag-and-Drop” – Everything organized more naturally
Drag and drop works so well for organization we’ve extended it to things outside of Pearltrees. Grab anything from anywhere – desktop, browser even within a document or web page – to add it to your account.
“My Interests” and “My Network” – A whole new way to explore your interests
We know that you like to explore amazing collections related to your interests, so we have made it even easier for you with two brand new features:
- “My Interests” to explore interesting topics suggested for you at each visit.
You’ll see fresh collections organized by other contributors based on what you have organized in your account. - “My Network” to enjoy others’ contributions in one place. “My Network” merges your notifications and news. Add interesting collections, teams and friends to your account and get their updates here!
The “list of your collections” – More than a global view of your account
Open the “My account” menu to see the list of your collections. Not only does this list give you a global view of your account but it will also let you organize it quickly by moving your collections with a drag and drop.
“Full HTML5” – A Universal Service, Accessible Everywhere
We have rebuilt Pearltrees entirely in HTML5, to make it readable everywhere, open, and more integrated into Web standards. You can enjoy it on most common browsers as well as iPhone, iPad and most current Android devices.
A Universal Experience across Desktop, Mobile and Tablet
Don’t forget to download the Android or iOS apps to organize, explore and share everything you like anywhere, anytime. You’ll enjoy the exact same experience on every device!
From the look of this, you’re going away from the visual organizer and mind map look, to something that mimics Evernote o even Pinterest. I’m not sure I like the look . One reason I use and recommend Pearltress is because it offers users a unique view of their ‘pearls’ and for some, this a better way to interface, organize, and analyze what they’ve collected.
Hi Patrice, the pearls, these precious pieces of content you want to keep, still exist with a different shape. The tree structure, trunk > branches > sub-branches, is also there and visible in the “list of my collection”. Moreover, the organization capabilities have been dramatically increased. Have you try to drand-and-drop a document directly into your account ? I hope also, you’re going to share some collection of yours. It’s so easy now because the neaw vizualization is very easy to read. Don’t worry Pearltrees is still Pearltrees, just with new clothes 😉
How do you associate your product with either ‘pearl’ or ‘trees’ now?
It’s new, and I’m excited, but the drastic change from a visual and customisable navigation experience worries me. What is the future of pearl trees? where are you steering this?
How do i get a sense of breadth and depth of a subject i manage in pearltrees now?
Good job with the drag and drop though! gonna love that!
Hi Wade, the pearls, these precious pieces of content you want to keep, still exist with a different shape. The tree structure, trunk > branches > sub-branches, is also there and visible in the “list of my collection”. Moreover the name Pearltrees also embodies our vision which is to “democratize the organization of digital information”. This objective had been expressed by Pearltrees CEO, Patrice Lamothe in “the third frontier of the Web“. Pearltrees 2 is just a new step in this direction to let people organize, explore and share everything they like with more simplicity and efficiency. Don’t worry we’re still persuing the same objective.
Is it possible to get the old view back. I can’t see the relationship between things any-more. This new view is no where near as useful as pearltrees were to me before.
Hi John,
You can still “see in Pearltrees 1” within in the “my account” column. It will open the Pearltrees 1 view in another tab, so you can switch back and forth between views. That’s true there no more visible link. Items are now tied together within one collection and ordered from top to bottom. Your items are both organized and easy to read! As to the words, there are size under which we can’t go, readability matters.
Ah, I figured it out. If you go to your settings at the left. Near the bottom there is an option to check back to pearl-tree 1. I see no way to go from pearl-tree 1 to pearltree 2. It might be good if you could switch back and forth between views. The way I use pearltree, the old view is much more useful to me. Not only does it display how things are organized graphically to me but it allows me to link from node to node of my tree. I use links within my tree extensively.
If two different views are being carried through going forward there should be a way to link to a particular view (i.e. specify graphical or grid with a URL)
For the new grid view the zoom behaviour is not very good for Google chrome. Whatever zoom size I choose I can only see about 3-4 word of the description.
This doesn’t tell me enough to tell me what any news story is about. I should be able to increase the number of characters shown without making the font bigger. In other words we need a way of controlling the font independently of the zoom.
I should be able to zoom with a fixed font size and conversely fix the grid size and change the font size.
Another problem I have with google chrome is the collection list on the left won’t close for me once I open it. Furthermore, if I zoom in while the collection list is shown it gets so big that it takes up half the screen!
To close the “list of my collection”, click again on the “my account” button.
I suppose I can use firefox for the grid view and chrome for the classic view. The grid view seems to work better on firefox. If only I could set each browser to open in a particular style of view by default.
Should work with an equal level of quality anywhere !
I don’t see a way to create short-cuts to different parts of your pearl-tree in the new grid view.
When on a collection, click on the “edit” button. You’ll find there a “duplicate” button that allows you to create short-cuts.
In google chrome within the pearltree 1 view, if I right click on a pearl and go new tab it will open the new tab up in the pearl tree 2 view. The same thing happens if I try to duplicate a tab. If I am in the pearltree 1 view I would like to stay in the pearl tree 1 view.
Well, it’s just a view ! The main interface remains the 2.0 version and everything you’ll open in Pearltrees will be, by default, Pearltrees 2.0
In the new grid view if I click on add this to a collection it doesn’t give me the option to add it to my drop zone.
Can we also have it so we can specify the default view for guests? I would like guests to my pearl tree to view in in the pearl-tree 1 view by default.
So strongly do I dislike Pearltrees 2, I am repeating comments here that I just made on your Google+ profile – “I do not like Pearltrees 2. First, I echo the sentiments expressed by +Delta Gypsy above. The original Pearltrees was simply that – original. In terms of the looks of your product, you have tinkered with something that did not need fixing and made it, in a word, boring and “vanilla.” Second, Pearltrees 2 does not function the same way as the original in at least one key way. The “my interests” feature, which you tout as something new and better, does not link my Pearltrees to related content at all, the way the original did, and does not come close to representing my interests based on content I have posted to Pearltrees. Third, one of the greatest features of Pearltrees, and which made it truly unique, was the way it could link to a whole universe of related content…all you had to do was move a Pearltree around the screen and related content, posted by others, would instantly appear. That feature now seems lost entirely and, for what? So you can have some boring grid look to your product. I am sure that a lot of thought went into the decision to launch Pearltrees 2, but as a long-standing Premium member, I sincerely hope you will rethink your decision and stick with the original design and concept for your product.”
The original design had great qualities for organization and visualization. We know these qualities for having improved, simplified and extended them over the years. With this new version, we have done everything to preserve them one by one, and project them in a broader context to make them more universal and more powerful. This is the meaning of the new design! We also know that change is always surprising and difficult, so we do everything we can to facilitate this transition (the old version is still accessible :-)). Moreover, version 2.0 is a major improvement individually and collectively. In particular, your collections are now immediatly understandable which increases your ability to share. This new step brings a lot of collective value and is a great move towards the original vision and the ultimate goal of Pearltrees: http://www.cratyle.net/en/2010/03/11/the-webs-third-frontier/
“makes it simpler”
Yes, and finding a way to add a new pearltree (ah, apologies, it’s not peartrees anymore, right?) takes time – it fact I still can’t find it. I know you’ve said something about drag’n’drop – do I drag it from my imagination (just to compare, but “very complex and hard to understand” version 1 had a obvious and intuitive button add. Hm, seems having that button is a no way for a “simpler” version, eh?
“more beautiful”
So, you’re telling that one-dimensional array of squares is more beautiful that a tree with different branches that you can customize however you want, right?
“more accessible than ever”
How does changing from nice-looking trees to these squares makes it more accessible? Ah, wait, I think I know – “as well as iPhone, iPad and most current Android devices”, right? But guys, you don’t need to use such a roundabout way of telling things. Just tell honestly: “We decided to expand our market to cover mobile devices. So we sacrificing our redeeming feature to get more users”.
“organize … with even more power”
Say, with old version I could not only organize trees, but also i could organize items within the trees, sorting them by branches. Now it’s all a linear mess. If previously a pearltree had 50 pearls and looked nice, now it looks totally like some kind of dump. And you call that “more power to organize”? O…k.
“This new format lets you organize and display things however you want!”
Too bad previous version didn’t, right?
Well, that’s it. If you want to sacrifice your old users just to expand your market – so be it. But please, stop singing praising odes and calling awesome something, that is not.
P.S. I DO know that one can switch back to the old view in settings. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s not very intuitive and if ‘More’ option is collapsed you’ll never know that it’s there. Moreover, if you want to share it will be squares that they see.
Well, I think I’ll need to switch to other bookmarking tool. Because peartrees didn’t live up to my expectations.
Hi Monceber,
Thank you very much for sharing your point of view. We’ve made this change to improve sharing cabilities while preserving organisational capacities.
– We’ve worked hard to simplify things, but sometimes a change makes things difficult. The add button is now the button with the star. We’ve also simplemented a new way to add things with drag and drop things into your collection. Of course, nothing has been withdrawn, you still can add thing with the extension, with Facebook/Twitter or by email.
– Everything is subjective when it comes to beauty but we tried to highlight the visuals of the items. Plus, you can manipulate your items and choose their place in the collection. Finally you can customize the images of your collection and they’ll be used in the background inside the collection. It let’s you create a pleasant atmosphere 😉
– HTML5 lets us get rid of flash you had to install to access Pearltrees 1. The version is more accessible because you can access it directly from your browser.
– The combination of the “list of your pearltrees” and the extended drag and drop lets you organize things like never before. Withing a collection, you can still move the item and place them tthe way you want. As you mentionned in your comment we’ve made sure to preserve previous qualities.
–
I don’t understand this change. I feel like it’s not Pearltrees anymore. No Pearl, no tree…
I haven’t tested the new functionalities, but I’m disappointed by the way it looks.
le moins que l’on puisse dire c’est que ça fait pas l’unanimité…
j’aime pas du tout, aucun intérêt…voir ici pour les détails : http://lite2.framapad.org/p/PT_version_1_et_2
Tu sais, nous avons vraiment fait beaucoup d’études sur la question, des centaines de tests individuels avec des utilisateurs ou non de PEarltrees. Nous avons aussi invité 60.000 beta testeurs pour confirmer, commencer à polir le format. Nous ne changeons pas par plaisir, mais parceque nous pensons que collectivement, ça en vaut la peine. Une immense majorité d’internautes a besoin d’organiser ses documents digitaux. Beaucoup d’entre eux comprennent la valeur de les partager avec d’autres. C’est ce bénéfice collectif qui motive le changement. Ce nouveau format, est un changement désagréable mais il va apporter beaucoup collectivement et j’espère que tu pourras en profiter aussi en découvrant des collections très enrichissante. Peut-être ce format n’est pas celui que tu préfères mais il peut certainement t’être profitable par la mise en valeur des collections des autres. Je me permets de te donner le lien vers la vision qui est celle que nous suivons depuis le début de Pearltrees, n’hésite pas à me dire ce que tu en penses
PEARLTREES VERSION 2: MAYBE NOT A GREAT IDEA
– Loss of information
• Jerarchy for visiting users lost
○ Owner can still use thee config panel to see it
○ In any case the information is less accesible
• Relational information between nodes that are not pearltrees lost
○ There is no way to identify what is essential now, beyond the sequence
• Visual information from nodes removed (commented by another user in link: http://lite2.framapad.org/p/PT_version_1_et_2)
– Loss of usability/accesibility
• Rapid perception of information organized in a mindmap is lost
• Cannot drag branches
• New accounts don’t have the old view available
○ I understand this a way to promote the change, new users will probably not know the old view
○ You may see an increase in abandoned accounts after this change
§ It’s not success and people liking the new interface, it’s people wanting a way around
• Cannot select how visitors can view content (and it doesn’t adapt wel to new system so it’s necessary)
○ Older collections/pearltrees were made in another context and it doesn’t translate well to the new one, making most user content which is the strength of this product, work against it.
– Loss of brand image
• PearlTree name doesn’t make sense anymore for the general audience, maybe it does for it’s managers
– Loss of market competitiveness
• Abandoning market niche to be “one more”
• What is being offered now it’s available to other products, that can substitute PearlTrees
• Symbaloo is a much better grid bookmarking/content curation interface
○ More usable
○ More customizable
○ Can mimic collections inside another with a link to a specific board
○ Has privacy control, which is premium in PearlTrees
§ You are actually risking the most beneficial part of the users!
• Visual grid products: Pinterest
• Content curation:
○ Scoop.it
○ RebelMouse
• Tree bookmarking (if you were to go back)
○ Wtree
§ I don’t really like this, PearlTrees was way better
– Loss of credibility/trust
• This change is too radical and a forced one, warns users to not rely in the continuity of the services.
• Possible premium customers may now go away because the product seems unstable.
○ Seems amazing the agreement terms allow you to change the product so much it makes it a completely different one.
• It also appears that the userbase is not taken into account (why not make some polls about theese changes being wanted and if they’ve been done, please share them)
○ If there was indeed a warning and majority wants this, I apologize
I would have never used PearlTrees If I discovered it today and that’s a shame, because it was one of the best products I have seen in some time. If you’re going to abandon the old product please sell the old API or make it Open Source, it’s too valuable to be lost.
Why not launch this as a separate product? Because they have a nice user base to experiment with, I can only hope it remains as an experiment, but I’ve already seen similar things happen with NetVibes for example, in order to “go mobile”. In that case the changes weren’t that radical and there were effective ways around the new changes.
Please at least make it a premium feature to have the old view back, I’m willing to expend money to keep a useful tool. Or make a desktop app. Or a way to export some PearlTree in tree view. Or let us select how visitors see our content. I had an educational project based on this platform and now when the deadline is approaching, all the work done seems to be next to useless, please don’t ignore the importance of time invested by your users in your product. It’s because we liked it as it was, that it was used so much.
Sorry for my english and my typos, my laptop keyboard is a bit weird, I expect to make enough revisions of this text. and I can only hope there was a proper DAFO and market analysis behind this strategic decision, because the reasons for it don’t compensate for what is lost in my humble opinion.
Hi Xiwi, thanks, for your interest about Pearltrees and your enthousiasm about the first version,
We have created Pearltrees after a vision expressed here by Patrice Lamothe and we stick to it.
Our main goal was, is and will be to let people share organized collections of objects, in order to democratize the organization of digital information. Not for the pleasure of it, neither beacause it’s a too important issue to be let to algorythm, but because it could be a huge collective value. We had to build a product that would let people organize what they like and that organization should be easy to share. Not easy to reconciliate a personalize organization with an object built for being shared.
The first version of Pearltrees was designed to achieve this goal. It was really good at organizing but not so good at sharing, at least after our considerable amount of feedback and studies. Here are the specifications of PEarltrees 2 keep all the organizational capabilities of PEarltrees 1 and improving drastically the sharing ones. It gives you the context of this major change and shows why it’s not changing the nature of PEarltrees. It’s essence is even reinforced with Pearltrees 2.
We have invited approximatively 60.000 contributors to the beta, we have made several hundreds and one-to-one interviews to understand how people felt in front of the two format. The results are not exactly in favor of mindmaps. It’s clearly interesting (and don’t forget it was ou format choice for PEarltrees 1) but clearly not the most pragmatic for the objective we are persuing. This is why we made this change.
However, we also know very well all the qualities of Pearltrees 1, especially in terms of organization, for having created it. So we have listed all the advantages of Pearltrees 1 visualization and we made our best effort in rebuilding them in Pearltrees 2. Some comfort features will of course complete this very first version. And if you really can’t live without Pearltrees 1, you still can access it 😉
Thanks for this new version! I love it, it’s gonna be so much easier for me!
Cela faisait quelques temps que je n’étais pas retourné sur pearltrees.
J’y suis retourné suite à la mise a jour et à la V2.
Un peu déroutante au départ, elle est au finale très lisible voir plus lisible que l’ancienne version.
J’aime bien la nouvelle configuration, la recherche est simplifiée.
Une belle évolution, a tester sur du plus long terme.
Tous les changements sont déroutants ! Ca fait maintenant quelques mois qu’en interne nous utilisons la V2 et je trouve, en tant qu’utilisateur, qu’elle a vraiment des capacités étonnantes 😉 Merci
Feels a bit weird to use the new version, I liked the pearls of the last one. But I find the squares more intuitive and sleek – I found my way much quicker around it. Overall I’m pretty happy with 2.0!
Hi Dervillo,
It’s definitively a big move so there’s an adaptation period to fully appreciate the version 2.0. Thanks for your encouraging words!
There is really a lost of a feature with the new page: if you grouped pages in trees inside a folder in a hierarchical way, thee hierarchy disappears. That was the attractive of pearltrees. Is there a way to load the old style by default?
Hi iv,
Thanks for your interest in Pearltrees. It was really attractive for organizing! And we’ve worked hard to keep all the benefits of the first version while adding better sharing abilities. Of course, it can’t be exactly the same and an adaptation period is necessary (it has been for us also;-)). And, if you really miss the tree view you can still see it in the menu “my account”. It will let you compare tthe two ways of organizing.
I dont get it. In the past pearltrees promised something very different than todays. In this article: http://www.whiteboardmag.com/9-lessons-about-the-web-and-business-from-pearltrees-the-original-curator-of-the-web/, it was sayd:
“Until now, most bookmarking apps regard bookmarking and organising as a pain to be solved, not a pleasure. It’s the idea that you have a computer and you let the computer handle the boring stuff. Hence the auto-organisation and semantic web ideas. Our initial take was the opposite. We thought: everybody likes to organise stuff that he or she cares about. Shoes, clothes, books, whatever. When you like something, it’s actually a pleasure to cureate.
What is curation? It’s not just organising content – it’s the idea that organizing this content creates value for you and others, and pleasure. That was the idea: let people make sense of things.”
Now you say:
“Our main goal was, is and will be to let people share organized collections of objects, in order to democratize the organization of digital information. Not for the pleasure of it, neither beacause it’s a too important issue to be let to algorythm, but because it could be a huge collective value. ”
Did people in pearltrees un-learned from their own experiences?
Now, as you are an organization, ask yourself: does a pearltrees without mindmapping really offer something different to possible clients than services like pinterest or others? When you do a marketing study, you must be sure you are making the right questions.
Hi alvin,
Good question are not easy to answer ;-). We our goal has always been to democratize the organization of information. It’s mentioned in the Whiteboardmag interview, and detailed in this post written during Pearltrees early days. Let’s be honest, the tree visualization had great qualities, we wouldn’t have buit it if we didn’t believe in these qualities. However, with Pearltrees 2.0, we’re thinking that we are going further in terms of oranization capabilities and sharing capabilities. The collective benefits of sharing is very promising. This is why we’re thinking it worth the change.
Thanks, I love Pearltrees 2.0. It’s so good to rediscover my collection. I’ve use Pearltrees quite intensively a few years ago. I must admit I got tired of the pearls and when trees grow too big, I have vertigo. I’m back guys!
Thanks for the encouraging words. Have fun with the new version!
Let me start by saying that I’m a premium member and will lose interest quickly if the new version is forced upon me. I get board very quickly by the grid layout, it does not interest me aesthetically or intellectuality and will not inspire me to build my pearl tree like I have, creating 10 000 pearls in five months with an average of 1000 views per month.
The old format worked and has been for me far better in terms of generating traffic than any personal website that I a have ever worked on. It is true that as the number of pearls on a node gets large that the new format may offer advantages. This is why it may be a useful supplement. However, I do not use pearltrees as purely a bookmarking tool. What interests me more is the connection between the links than the links themselves. I use it to see how ideas are related and the new version pales in comparison at showing me the structure connecting the ideas behind the links.
We are told that you can do everything in the new version that you could do before. This is not true. I cannot create a time line structure and quickly see related ideas to each node in the time line. As an example of such a structure, I mapped out a discussion on a philosophy forum, where each node of the trunck represeted key posts along the discussion and off these posts I branched off the links that interested me:
http://pearltrees.com/p/cJ9F5
I cannot do this in the new version. The old version is also useful in mapping out key ideas from videos as I did with a talk by Chomsky on education:
http://pearltrees.com/p/cI5w5
and on the philosophy of mind:
http://pearltrees.com/p/cI331
The mind map of Chomsky’s talk on the philosophy of mind allows me to quickly see what Ideas are covered in this talk and conversely that these ideas are related to this talk. In the new format these connections would be much less apparent and this would be especially so if I mapped out many sub branches.
The mind mapping is also useful for mapping out the ideas of lectures as I did with the Google python training class:
http://pearltrees.com/p/cNXT9
and other lectures/tutorials.
The mindmapps are also usefull at visualizing the structure of a website as I’ve done here with the website on Antenna theory:
http://pearltrees.com/p/cIC1b
As for sharing, I’ve been working on creating thermodynamic notes
http://pearltrees.com/p/Bv7L8
Which extensively link to my pearl tree and a wiki that also links to my pearl tree nodes. The idea is that you can quickly go to a page by scanning the QR code. Then if you follow the pearltree link you can quickly see how the concept in the notes relates to other concepts.
We should not think of pearltrees as just static links in folders. Instead we should think of them as highly structured graphs of ideas (i.e. mind maps) which present to people much more than just the information contained in the links.
It is always a bad Idea to try to force major changes on paying users. Even for non paid services such as delicious drastic change has led to disaster. Microsoft for instance learned quickly the folly of removing the start button and ended up restoring it after user complaints. If you want to pursue grids that is find but I implore you to keep the old interface as either an alternative view or as a separate service. The new version of pearltrees or should I call it “pearl file folders?” is not the same type of tool and trying to force it upon people will alienate a large part of your existing user base.
Finally I would strongly suggest letting curators of their content set the default view for their pearl trees as either grid or mind-map based on their preferences. People than could either choose to navigate by curator defaults or by their own preferences. If a default is not set then the viewers preferences would dictate the view.
Hi s243a,
Thanks for being a premium member. Of course, the old version is great, we wouldn’t have created it and perfected it over the four years if we ignored its qualities. However, our goal is achieve the democratization of the organization of the digital information, detailed here. After, hundreds of one-to-one interviews, discussions with members of the community, invitation to alpha and beta version, it seems the new format, is delivering the same organization qualities and better sharing ones. However, Pearltrees 1 is still accessible. We may create an exclusive access for premium members and give some parts of the code… Let’s continue the discussion and invent great solutions.
As a side note, I can’t always drag and drop things to my drop zone in the new view and if I pick something in the new view it doesn’t let me added to my drop zone.
Terrible. What have you done???
It looks more like SquareTrees or should i say Square rows.
Did you not realise why Peartrees was a success?
It seems that you have removed all that was good and different about pearltrees that separated you from the competition. The reason me and many others liked peartrees was for the way it was presented in a way which reflected our visual thought patterns. IT WAS GENIUS.
A Branch of trees with pears almost simulating the human brain and the way we think.
I will not be renewing my subscription if this version stays.
You should really listen to your customers. I for one was never questioned or asked my opinion before this was released and i expect many others were not. So i think that your customer research was not carried out correctly with already paying customers.
A so disappointed Premium customer. 🙁
Hi Darren,
We’re also big fans of the previous version! Afterall, we’ve created it and perfected it for several years now. However, our goal is not to build a min mapping tool but to create an interest network to democratize the organization of digital information. This vision leads our decisions since the beginning of Pearltrees. You can read here a detailed presentation of Pearltrees’ vision by Patrice Lamothe. In that sense, we’ve noticed that the old format was very efficient for organizing but not great for sharing. Especially because a lot of people don’t know how to read a mindmap. So we worked, with a lot of members of the community, on a new format with the same organizing capabilities and more sharing abilities. It tooks us several months of research, discussion and work to come up with this new format. We paid attention on keeping every features and every benefit of the first version, plus better sharing abilities. Changes are always hard to deal with, but beyong that it’s interesting to pay attention to the new format. You can also compare it directly to the old view, since it’s still accessible by clicking on the menu “my account” > More > see in Pearltrees 1.
Frocaboy, may I ask whether the users that you surveyed where the ones that used pearltrees the most? I can’t imagine people sustaining the same interest to build large pearltrees with the grid view as they can with the mind-maps view.
Of course, we started to discuss the idea with our biggest power users and then with invited 60.000 of them to try the beta. And 15% of them were purely against the change. Since we wanted to preserve the interests of everyone we let access to Pearltrees 1.
s243a> Incredible content there, good job sir! I’m glad to have the old view available to be able to see it. Too bad, that won’t work for everyone and most people won’t know it’s optimized to see it in tree view. Maybe add version 1 or tree view to the name of pearltrees organized that way. It would be amazing if default configurable views were implemented and made that aspect more easy. I completely agree with your views and I’m thankful, that you expressed them ass premium member and with concrete examples. We all love this product, or at least in the old form.
Darren> I agree that the research seems to not be accurate with premium member’s opinions. Also very good remark of human brain working in a relational way, like mind maps.
Frocaboy> Thanks for sharing the obvious, that there was some research behind this decision and for sharing specific figures.
I think it would be interesting to know if those 15% users had content of high quality. I’m assuming they didn’t focus in sharing as much as others and were not as relevant. If you only do Pearltrees/collections your content is more popular and modular and takes less time to build it, also it can be built from collective work. I combine these 2 strategies and like to add related Pearltrees in the mindmap structure of things I research, but that’s beyond the point. I’m sure you have done quantitative analysis perfectly and therefore have a qualitative analysis on the social aspects as it’s all about number of connections. However other qualitative aspects aren’t there. Of course this is just a guess, but I think I’ not alone trying for things to make sense.
Will the old view remain there FOREVER (can you guarantee that intention at all?) or are there plans to remove it?
Hi Xiwi,
Thanks for making a synthesis of the discussion ;-).
For the moment, the objective is really to improve sharing capabilities of Pearltrees while keeping all the organizational capacities of the old version. In the following weeks, we are going to perfect Pearltrees 2. If, there’s a doubt, we also love the old version for having created and worked on it for years. Be sure, that we want to please you as much as we can. That’s also why an access to Pearltrees 1 is still available. Some hypothesis of finding ways to save the old displays, especially for premium contributors, are in discussion and we may publish some parts of our code like we’ve always done. However, for the moment, the direction is clearly on the new version.
Frocaboy: “We may create an exclusive access for premium members and give some parts of the code… Let’s continue the discussion and invent great solutions.”
I would like if you could explain this in more detail, even if it’s only a plan.
Exclusive access to:
a) parts of the code
b) to permanent tree views or similar configuration options
c) to the old service (meaning there are plans to remove it eventually)
d) something else
As you can see my imagination is running wild with that statement.
Hi Xiwi,
For the moment no precise plan, only discussion. However, at Pearltrees, plans have always started with discussion. 😉
To be honest I dont like the new design :/ I find it very difficult to organize the things now, is like having multiple folders in my pc.
I’m keeping with Version 1, hopefully you are not going to remove it.
Hi Dark_Wolf,
Let me introduce you to Pearltrees 2.0 new design advantages. First, it has been made to increase drastically the sharing capcities of Pearltrees in order to improve the collaborative benefits of Pearltrees. Of course, organization is still very important so we made sure to rebuild each feature and each benefits one by one with a new format. So I invite you to compare Pearltrees 2 with the old format (since it is still accessible).
“We have created Pearltrees after a vision expressed here by Patrice Lamothe and we stick to it.”
Admirable idealism or inflexible dogmatism? Hmmm. Seems like Pearltrees set out to do one valuable thing (democratize) and accidentally ended up doing another (organize). Now they want to throw away a lot of outstanding, groundbreaking work because it doesn’t fit their “vision.”
The history of inventing and exploring is full of people who accidentally discovered or created great things on the way to a different stated goal. Where would we be if the utility of these “happy accidents” was never recognized? I’ll tell you: we’d be sitting around without a lot of important advances in technology and knowledge that we enjoy today.
I wholeheartedly agree with other commenters who have stated that the Pearltrees 1 work is too valuable to lose. By all means continue on toward your very worthy original goal, but please please please incorporate the mindmap as an alternate and seamlessly-accessible view in the future…it would make a great Premium feature and would allow you to keep the old customers and appeal to new ones.
I know there is a way for the “organizers” and the “sharers” to co-exist in the future. That is my vision, and I think the public userbase response to Pearltrees 2 indicates I’m not the only one. Empower the people to choose their own level of involvement and organizational complexity! I for one would not be upset if I discovered a collection that was useful but was created with the new interface and didn’t have the relational/visual information…as long as I can choose how to organize MY pearls. Nor would I be upset to imagine someone discovering my “mindmapped” pearls and viewing them in the more basic “grid” mode.
You want democratization and a broad userbase to help achieve that goal? Excluding all the visual learners from your community is a poor way to do it. Plus, it seems very rude and disloyal (yes, even if for the best of long-term goals!) to the people who supported you early on.
Innovation is not a top-down process, nor is it a one-way street; it’s a process of discovery, evolution, and dialogue. Now I invite Pearltrees to enter into a true dialogue with ALL its users (and especially the ones who have taken the time to outline and defend their beliefs and ideas in a constructive way.)
Matthew,
We are a small team of 15 people, working days and night for the last 5 years to give you Pearltrees. Contrary to what you may think, everything we have done is not the result of a happy accident, but of hard work.
Here are two points:
– The new visualisation is the result of thousands of tests with thousands of people. Yes, we had a true dialogue with ALL kind of users (or non users), not only people who enjoy mindmaps. Even though the tree view was very powerful, keeping this format would exclude a lot of people from organizing their interests.
– Obviously we don’t want to exclude people who enjoyed the tree view. that is why, as we have said a lot of times now, you can still access your account in the old version.
We do appreciate all the work you put in building your collections, and we don’t want you to lose it overnight. That’s why we take time to discuss with you and to enable you to still use the old visualization.
I can see a lot of people have made comments here, but I just can’t sit down to read them all to find the answer.
Is there any way I can change back to the ‘mind map’ view?
That unique format what what attracted me over the many other similar products.
Thanks
Hi Colin,
Yes, you can see your account with the old visualization. Open the left menu and click on “Check in Pearltrees 1”.
But please take a moment to try the new visualization by creating a few collections in it. You’ll quickly see all its advantages 😉
amsika,
First, congratulations to all the Pearltrees staffers for being online on the main feedback channels (FB, G+, Pearltrees’ blog) and actively responding in person to so many comments and concerns.
Now:
“Contrary to what you may think, everything we have done is not the result of a happy accident, but of hard work.”
That’s not at all what I meant to say; I’m sorry I didn’t explain myself more clearly. I meant “happy” in the sense that Pearltrees 1 was the best way–bar none–I’ve found for _organizing_ collections of content. I meant “accident” in the sense that it seems Pearltrees views it as an “accident,” though not something bad, more like” not in line with our ultimate goal.” Also, it’s quite obvious from the quality of Pearltrees 1 that it came about as the result of a lot of hard work. 🙂
“Obviously we don’t want to exclude people who enjoyed the tree view. that is why, as we have said a lot of times now, you can still access your account in the old version.”
Mmmm, it seems very much that the key word here is “still.” For how long, amsika?
As we have also said: we don’t know for how long. What we know is that we care about the work done and we’ll keep the pearltrees as long as necessary. You won’t lose them.
Let’s do something to see if you can sell the idea to me:
Explain what features does pearltree 2 offers that other grid curators doesn’t already.
And please don’t tell me to go experiment my self with the new interface. It’s obvious I have being doing that and I remain unconvinced.
Hi Lander,
Thanks for your interests in Pearltrees.
What makes Pearltrees is not its visualization : it’s its great organizing capabilities. With Pearltrees you can add everything (web pages, notes, photos and files), very naturally (with a simple drag and drop.
You can organize everything in a very powerful way: you organize your content in collections, and sub-collections.
You can explore collections created by others, to enrich yours, or to collaborate with them.
And you can share your collections with everybody : and thanks to the new format they can read it and use it very easily.
I don’t know any other service that allows you to do this 🙂
I hate the new look. the blocks are so awful. the whole reason I signed up for this was the look. I liked being able to touch a pearl and then have it expand showing me others. now the squares are there and I touch some little circle to my right and they show me more squares. wow way to make me drop the site.
Well although I’ve been an early adopter of Pearltrees and a somewhat power user who worked collaboratively in teams to curate and share great links and content, this new system of grids and folders hides the content too much and is a retrograde step.
The concept of mindmaps as initially advanced by Tony Buzan fitted the original implementation of Pearltrees as it mimics how the brain actually stores information by linking it to existing information within the memory of the individual.
However much you protest that this is designed to improve sharing, you cannot deny that the removal of the “tree” from Pearltrees has irrevocably altered the usecase for lots of powerusers.
I have thousands of links and upon learning about the enforced move to version 2 and lack of clarity on retaining version 1 for any defined period, I have exported my list of links and plan to reconstruct the tree in Evernote with the Mohiomap plugin to replicate the now missing functionality. I pay for Evernote and it will become my default bookmarking tool now too.
Hi DrBazUK,
Thanks for your interest in Pearltrees!
We do know that some collections built with a tree format won’t appear in the same manner with the grid. That’s why we’re making sure that you can access your account in the tree format. Again, I insist on the fact that this option will be available as long as necessary: nobody will lose his/her work.
Yet, please take some time to give the new version a try, start creating new collections in it, and you will see its advantage for organizing and sharing your interests.
DrBazUK> Thanks for mentioning an alternative, made it worthy to follow the comments in this entry. I’m going to test it for sure. It would be ideal if that plugin also worked with PearlTrees, who knows what lies in the future =).
Not really what I wanted, because it messes with a lot of my carefully constructed ‘branches’ of tree pearls, which you can’t really call pearls anymore, since they’re now squares.
Like I had (past tense because of the change) some pearls of TV show, that has movies too and they were visually connected together by a branch, and the other way around. You can’t exactly see those exact connections now and it’s annoys a great deal.
The site doesn’t really live up to the name anymore. Cause you can’t really construct trees anymore, only bricks of squares, like a sidewalk. I know you can see the old layout for yourself, but not anyone else. Maybe you should give us an option of picking which layout fits us best personally: The old old one or the new one. But, I don’t know, that’s just a suggestion.
Hi Charlotte,
Thanks for your interests in Pearltrees and your suggestions!
Pearltrees 2.0 is a first step, and we’ll improve it regularly. So all the suggestions are welcome.
We changed to this new format because it’s even more easier, more powerful and more accessible. Yet, we understand (and appreciate!) that some people are attached to the old visualization, that’s why we let them chose which view they want to use.
Please, give this new version a try, start creating a few collections with it, and i’m sure you’ll see all its advantages 🙂
Kind regards,
gutted by this change 🙁 the pearl trees were the appeal to me, just like a mind map. this website has gone from feminine and creative to the all too familiar masculine and mundane. soooo disappointed.
Hi Andrea,
Thanks for your interests in Pearltrees! I understand your attachment to Pearltrees 1, it’s indeed a very appealing website. Do you know that you can still use it from a computer ? Just click on “Check in Pearltrees 1” in the left menu.
But please, give also Pearltrees 2 a chance. Start creating a few collections on it, and I’m sure you’ll see its advantages. Keep in mind also that it’s a first version and we’ll improve it regularly. So feel free to send us your feedbacks 🙂
Il y a t-il un problème aujourd’hui ? Car en mode Web je boucle sur la page de bienvenue http://www.pearltrees.com/s/welcome
Merci.
Bonjour Yvan,
C’est étonnant et bien sûr ça ne devrait pas arriver. Nous allons regarder
Pour en sortir, n’hésitez pas à supprimer la partie /s/welcome de l’URL, et vous devriez bien arriver sur Pearltrees.
Bonne journée !
Hello all! 🙂
I’d been trying to get familiar with the new interface, but is still really hard for me 🙁
I have one questions and one suggestion:
Is there a way to set Pearltress v1 as default?
About the collections, I will really something like “favorites” for some of the pearls for quick access 🙂 and obviously inside it all the pearls listed 🙂
something like this: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v668/trasgo04/Idea1.png
but everytime I try it just create a new collection 🙁 and then I feel like is having a lot of folders in your windows/mac PC
Thanks for listening to our comments!!! 🙂
Hi. I’m afraid there’s no way to default to Pearltrees 1.
I’m not sure I understand what you mean by your question about favorites? You can us the list of your collections to access any part of your account quickly so you could simply create a collection called favorites and add it where you like to your collection.
Oliver
As almost everyone here, I’m very disappointed with the new layout! Once you had something unique and very appealing. Now you have changed it to what seems a simple, boring folder type of structure. I want to have the old version as an alternative at least, and will likely not renew my premium membership if you don’t make that possible!
You mention it is possible on a computer, but why not on my iPad …?? That is where I do most of my exploration and where I collect most of the stuff I want to save!
Also, perhaps it is hidden somewhere in one of your FAQs, or mentioned somewhere above… But how do you add a new collection … And why is there not a simple button or something similar to achieve that..? Or have I missed it ..?
Zevs – everything you need to add anything can be found when you click the “add” button – the one with the star icon. From there you can create new collections, add web pages, photos, notes or file. You can also create a new collection with no clicks whatsoever in Pearltrees 2! Just drag one item on top of another and you’ll be asked to name your new collection. It’s one of the new ways Pearltrees 2 makes it easier for people to create and organize collections.
With human knowledge is soon to be doubling every twelve hours, it is essential that a tool exists that allows people to organize information the way the mind works so a person can sift through information and organize it to increase their knowledge as it develops according their growing understanding. PearlTrees 1 did that, but Pearltrees 2 does not. Pearltrees 1 was a positive step forward to supply a real 21st Century NEED. Pearltrees 2 is a step back to late 20th Century and will become less and less useful.
I find Pearltrees much more useful as a mind-map, where I can organize my interests and understanding with connecting links with which I associate meaning. As my understanding on a subject changes, I can easily change the connections and move my information around. This gives me a visualization of my understanding and its connections to different topics. I find this very valuable in refining my ideas.
Pearltrees 2 does not give me that flexibility or visual representation of meaning. To me
Pearltrees 2 is just like a Windows folder where the subfolders are hidden inside and cannot be seen. Pearltrees 2 does not give me what attracted me to PearlTrees.
Since I am a College Professor, I find Pearltrees 1 a very beneficial tool for my students to organize their thinking around a topic they are learning. I am planning on using it in the four Mathematics class I an teaching in the Fall. My students would not be able to use Pearltrees 2 effectively as this type of thinking tool.
When I go into More (at the bottom of the left panel) and Check Back Pearltrees 1, I get back to the form that I need. But when I leave the Pearltrees and come back, the interface has again changed back to Pearltrees 2. Could you please tell me how I can keep Pearltrees 1 permanently and not have to change back to it each time I enter Pearltrees?
I want to keep my information in the form of Pearltrees 1. If Pearltrees 1 goes away, I will not stay with Pearltrees 2.
AND –> someone else will develop a tool that does what Paerltrees 1 was laying the foundation for: a tool for people to follow their interests becoming proactive learners, allowing them to cope with the rapid changes resulting from the silos of information breakdown and merging, creating new technologies, resulting in more rapid job market and societal changes.
OK, thanks Oliver! I found it, a star for me usually symbolizes a place for creating/adding favorites…
What about the availability of version 1 interface then for iPads ..?
Okay, I’ve tried the new layout of pearltrees 2.0 and I am going to reiterate what a lot of people have already said here. The tile layout loses much of the organizational benefits that pearltrees 1 had. Personally, I would like it if you switch back to your original model. It is several orders of magnitude more useful.
Hi,
Thank you for your interest in Pearltrees!
We understand that some people are attached to the old version of Pearltrees, that’s why you can use it with the “My account” menu.
Yet, you will see, by using Pearltrees new version more that it’s very powerful for organizing what you like, and more accessible for everyone when you share them.
Kind regards
I’ve used the new do for a while now. And I’ll keep using it for its sharing and publishing options, but please move backwards.
democracy means votes.
I vote you let spatial organisation sprawl like it used to.
Thank you for your interest in Pearltrees!
Do you know you can still use the previous visualisation on your computer? Just click on “Check in Pearltrees 1” on the left menu.
HELP PLEASE – How do I revert to Pearltrees V1 on my IPAD???????
I already have Pinterest. I use Pearltrees for storing information in a graphical formate. The new formate reproduces Pinterest but not as visually pleasing. The NEW tree menu down the left side of Pinterest is so old windows it must be in the what’s old is new category.
The drag and drop features sound awesome if they work which they didn’t in my first attempt. Maybe just aren’t intuitive enough for me. The fact that you can add more than just web pages wit photos is great. Pearltrees better hope Pinterest doesn’t add this feature soon or there won’t be any point in having both.
I am assuming that the new format works for some people or it wouldn’t have changed, it doesn’t work for me. Could you please include a function to enable toggling between the visual option of version 1 and the new option of version 2. This would likely meet my needs currently met by Pearltrees and Pinterest. As Pinterest is at the moment it isn’t of interest to me.
Mike, on the iPad it is simply not possible to revert the app. The new version and the previous version are not based on the same code and there’s no way to toggle the format between the two.
We’ve made access available to the original format via the web as explained above.
Hi there,
Sorry to join with most others and express my disappointment with this new update to pearltrees. You mention in the post that all the organizational benefits are preserved, but the update destroys one of the main selling points of the product: the ability to organize pearls within a pearltree spatially and link them together as branches within a pearltree, rather than just an ordinal set of cold tiles within a set of hierarchical collections.
With the new simplistic grid format, the ability to organize things in a much more graphical manner is lost and the app loses a dimension that a lot of folks, myself included, found the strongest selling point of your product. Additionally, far fewer squares are visible than what was available by zooming/panning in the previous design.
I have not experienced the web version yet, but the iPhone version is a miserable experience and I’m glad I did not update my iPad version yet. The fact that you cannot switch to the old layout in the mobile versions is, quite frankly, a failure in design. Maybe you are trying to attract new users, but you will likely lose a lot of your old user base, the folks who helped build pearltrees into the community that exists today. Perhaps you should run a poll/vote to see how many users actually support this new update, but I think it would have been better to do this before such a major (and drastic) change.
I often use the pocket app to store items of interest because of its ability to recognize links in the clipboard (something that pearltrees might want to think of implementing), and then later push those links into pearltrees in a more organized format as I preferred the visual organization of pearltrees. With this new flat grid design vs. pockets ability to tag it is akin to older flat nested email folders vs. gmail’s label system.
While several elements of the update seem promising and evolutionary, I feel like you have compromised your core functionality and alienated a lot of your supporters by, in one fell swoop, destroying the carefully crafted branches that have taken time and effort to organize and develop. Indeed, you used to call this curating, but now is akin to a simple pasteboard of contents. Overall, it is a regression, in my opinion, even if sharing and functionality are easier, the presentation, organization, and visualization of content was fundamental to the attractiveness and experience of pearltrees and that has been damaged.
Here’s hoping that future updates move in a better direction or a fork to a new separate app, or someone else takes the torch where you previously left off.
Cheers,
Alex
@OWStarr
Thank you for your reply. Could you make Version 1 available on e App Store so I can delete v2 and replace if with v1.
Alternativly is there a way to backup my data preparatory to closing my account? Please provide instructions how to do at from an Ipad
Thank you