| Sarah Miller Visiting Electronic Resources Librarian Illinois Wesleyan University |
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Wikis, blogs, photo sharing, feed readers, and social networks are all attempts to store and organize information. Tagging is a common feature integrated into all of these tools, allowing users to label what entries contain or are related to. A limiting factor of tagging is the way personal vocabularies evolve and mature over time, making it increasingly difficult to create and apply tags consistently. These inconsistencies limit searching and sorting capabilities. When one or more additional users with tagging permissions are added to an account, the problem multiplies.
Twine is one potential solution. A product of Nova Spivack’s Radar Networks, Twine is on the verge of mainstreaming semantically analyzed content. Using the framework of a social network, Twine invites users to save information and share it with others. The way tags are applied is what makes this product different; Twine uses an algorithm to scan, locate, and create tags from your selected content. This presentation will review the mechanisms behind Twine, introduce the user interface, and demonstrate potential uses.
New York Times Article about Twine
Presentation (PDF)