Today there is a very positive article about Twine in ReadWriteWeb. Twine is a semantic bookmarking program that automatically categorizes your bookmarked articles. The ReadWriteWeb piece discusses the fact that Twine may soon surpass Delicious, Yahoo's bookmarking system, in terms of page views.
Now I would like to see Twine succeed. But one of the problems endemic to the semantic web space is the total failure to consider user interface. The last time ReadWriteWeb wrote about Twine, they were brutal regarding the quality of the user interface, but this time they are somewhat more kind.
But I have to say I just don't get it. Perhaps I am just too dumb or too unmotivated. But Twine is a bookmark manager, right? So I just have to ask one question. How do you bookmark something?
I am sure it is there somewhere on the homepage, but I certainly can't see where. Now to be clear this is a bit of a rhetorical question. If I really was focused I am sure I could figure out the steps to add a bookmark. But the point is I *don't want* to be that focused. I, like many people, need to be coaxed into an application. It needs to be easy, and there needs to be some obvious payoff. And I would submit that if there is not some big easy-to-see button on the front of a bookmark manager that says "bookmark" or something like it, then there is a problem.
Or perhaps Twine is just over my head.
I think the recent Twine-love is an example of the digerati mafia pushing an agenda that may not be true. No way Twine has more users than delicious. Clearly they've found a way to cut the data to enable that spin, but something smells in W2.0 land.
ReplyDeleteYou're not the only one Hank
ReplyDeleteYou have to get the Twine Bookmarklet. There's a link on your Interest Feed (after you login). You can also get it from the tools link at the bottom of the page. No download required -- it's drag and drop javascript.
ReplyDeleteGet the bookmarklet! It's here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.twine.com/tools
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteYou have missed the point. I did the the invitiation to grab the bookmarklet. but:
1. There is nothing on the site that says "this is useless without the bookmarklet"
2. Why would you make something that is useless without the bookmarklet? If this is in fact the only way to do it, the design is *insane*.
Delicious and Twine are interesting tools in that I hear about them a lot, but am not aware of anyone I know who actually uses them--and I actually hang out with semantic web-o-philes. In contrast, everyone complains about how Twitter is over-hyped, but I know a lot of people who use it.
ReplyDeleteI think you have to look at Twine's coverage as part of a narrative in which web 3.0 will disrupt the dominant paradigm and make Google obsolete. No, seriously, there is something to this semantic web stuff, but the narrative is a bit ahead of the reality. I actually believe the reality will get there, but not necessarily soon or with any of the current players in lead roles.
You don't need the bookmarklet to get value from Twine actually. Although you would certainly get more value if you have it -- enables you to add stuff. But even if you don't add stuff you can just read the great content that is being found there. For example, join some of the Top 100 twines (in the Explore section). By doing that you will get streams of great links around the interests those twines represent, curated by thousands of people with those interests. Most people who use Twine just read the links that are being found around interests in fact.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous,
ReplyDeleteSo you are saying this is a bookmarking app that, if you don't install the bookmarklet, is only good for reading other people's twines.
I strongly suspect the only people that come to twine and are not bookmarking, do so because it does a good job at being relevant to google i.e. good SEO. But I suspect the number of people that do not bookmark that have twine as a regular purposeful destination is just a smidgen above zero.
How you could argue that it is good for a bookmarking app to not allow people to bookmark easily is very strange, particularly because it is such an obvious oversight for a company that has raised tens of millions of dollars. Do you work there?
I didn't get Twine either. I tried, but it just wasn't useful to me. I suppose that I just didn't "get it". Nice to see that I am not the only one. I decided recently, to no longer involve myself with this service.
ReplyDeleteperhaps they will add a web interface.
ReplyDeleteAll I want from delicious or reddit is a random palette of potentially interesting links to things I've never heard of before. They're entertainment sites. I can get that on their front page without logging in. The forums are worthless to me, and sharing links through communities of interest doesn't help me at all.
ReplyDeleteTwine means essentially nothing to me. I don't feel any need to share my bookmarks with others, and I can manage my personal bookmarks very well using just the boring old browser UI.
When I do research, which as an analyst is quite frequently, I can do it much more effectively "on my own" -- in fact relying indirectly on many other people, from wikipedia contributors to industry journalists and bloggers to whoever links to high-ranked Google search results to make them high-ranked -- but I don't see any value in Twine's particular brand of collaboration.
The twines themselves seem to be rather low value. Look at today's front-page postings to the "technology trends" twine -- all over the place, random junk, really, not nearly as amusing as front page items on delicious or reddit, and essentially useless in terms of nes or for research.
I admit I haven't made any investment in using Twine. Maybe it's great after your 10th or 100th hour of use. But I don't think I should have to. If they can't make an obvious case to me for the value of the service, I don't feel like I need to investigate it thoroughly to prove its worth.
I don't get Twine, either, but I certainly wouldn't call it a bookmarking site. It seems to me a free-form blogging/commenting/forum site, with each "twine" simply being a thread on connected content. I think the best way to describe it is generically-threaded, community-managed information.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I can find NO use for it, although I make great use of blogs, comments, forums and Twitter.
Twine seems to me to be an experiment in generic-ness for the sake of generic-ness. A "semantic Web" that's machine-readable, through and through, and independent of the structural/presentational form of that info.
But do *people* need it? I know what a blog is, and use it when appropriate, I know what comments are, and use them likewise, and the same goes for social nets, Twitter, and bookmarkings.
But what's a twine? Who the hell knows?
Who needs a twine? IMHO, probably no one.
I can see Twine being very useful if you are a doctoral student working on your dissertation with lots of citations and references from online sources. It is more than a Bookmark/Favorites tool, it also provides you with a snapshot of the page so you remember what the link is about at the glance. I have asked for a bibliography plug-in but don't think they cared.
ReplyDeleteyou can add bookmarks by email.
ReplyDeleteI still drop by Twine from time to time, but I am not impressed: poor performance, odd user interface, and what is it offering that I don't have elsewhere?
ReplyDeleteFurther, the twines I have been monitoring seem to be dominated by people attempting to show off how sophisticated their knowledge is, rather than people seeking a genuine discussion.
I rather doubt that Twine will survive. Shame really, given all the resources thrown into it.
As an (occasional) user of Twine I can really agree with the sentiment of your article. I still much prefer Delicious for the ease of use. But I can see the great (but unfortunately wasted) potential of Twine. If you think UI is too hard to use on a desktop - try mobile !
ReplyDeleteI just hope somebody at TWINE is listening ...
Twine just looks terrible, besides that the engine is dreadfully slow, and I just don't get the point, to me its just a cheap knock up search engine, that has some thumb nails.
ReplyDelete