1. Story vs key words

In Pearltrees it is all about building the world of your interests. A pearltree represents a given interest. A pearltree is made of pearls and each pearls represents a web content. So what is new? In Pearltrees, you use pearls (web content : posts, comments, vids, pics…) to tell a story on your interest in a the way that makes sense for you. I am really interested in the Beatles, but I am interested in this band in a very special way that I could not tell with key words (tags). But I can tell you how I like the Beatles with a pearltree. Why? Because I can chose the order in which I will present the contents I have selected, I can choose the title of my pearls. I am the curator of my web about the Beatles. And interest by interest, pearltree by pearltree, I am building the world of my interests. In a nutshell, Pearltrees is about enabling people to curate their vision of what they are interested in whereas bookmarking activities is all about not loosing some webpages.

2. Alone you can be strong, but you cannot be powerful

It is really hard to bookmark collaboratively. First, a lot of people want to keep their bookmarks private. But even if people would like to share their findings, tags are too ambiguous. They remind me of the Babel tower story. Everybody points out the same thing with a different word. So, in a bookmarking service you can be strong individually but you will never have the power to harness the collective intelligence. In Pearltrees, it’s very different. People meet on common URL. There is no ambiguity. For example, many people love photography! But it could be a job, an art, a way to keep souvenirs and everybody calls it “photography”. The only way to distinguish between these different meanings  is to look at the specific contents there are interested in. You can then gather those who are interested in the same things within “photography”. So each of those group will have a valuable and accurate benefit from others and they will be collectively much more powerful. That is Pearltrees!

3. Organizing is a step, re-organizing is life

Have you ever noticed that you do not see things now as you did six months ago. Bob Dylan sang the times they are changing. Now imagine that every time you are altering your views you would have to re-tag each of your bookmarks. Difficult isn’t it? In Pearltrees, you have all your interests (not a library of bookmarks) and within each of them everything is movable and everyone is moving stuff all the time. You can take a pearl or a pearltree and move it. You can even move a whole branch. You can also delete your pearls. And as your account includes also other users’s pearltrees, you can enjoy how others are moving on their interests. Pearltrees is like life, because it is built to be easily reorganized at anytime.

Filed under: Platform by Frocaboy on February 7th, 2010