Twine the Launch of the Interest Network

By Azam on October 21, 2008

Twine is an application that helps people organize, share and discover information around their interests. Twine connects users to relevant content, products and people that match their interests, by leveraging the “wisdom of crowds” and next-generation Semantic Web technologies. Twine is developed around “Interest Networks” or ideas that are organized using semantic technology to connect with related content, subject or topic, and other users with similar interests. Radar Networks intertwines ideas, related content with users into a knowledge network of interests or “twines” to help organize information in a easy, accessible manner.

Interest Networks

Twine is an “interest network,” not just a social network. If a social network is about who we are interested in, an “interest network” like Twine is about what we are interested in. Interest-focused sites called “twines” may be created to collect, organize and share content around specific subjects. This content might include bookmarks, videos, photos, articles, e-mails, notes or even documents. In addition, twines can be public or private and can be used by individuals and/or groups of any size.

In the last six months of beta testing, 500,000 users joined Twine and 50,000 remain active, Spivack said. Half of the Twines created are public and members have added about one million items to the database. “The most interesting statistic is time spent–six minutes per user per session, which is more than a tracking and discovery sites like delicious, Digg and StumbleUpon receives,” according to Nova Spivack Twine founder.

The Technology

Twine is heavily embedded with semantic web technology that largely runs in the background to leverage technology to define relationships and then suggest related information such as similar content, subjects/topics, and users of similar interests. The idea is to created knowledge from analyzing the data and comparing analysis across the networks to result in a suggestion and/or recommendation engine. Twine uses intelligent technology to allow for the seamless function of organization of data into a knowledge repository for users.

“When we first launched, semantic technology was the story,” Nova Spivack of Twine said. “It was novel then, but now have to show the value, and to do that we can’t emphasize the semantic technologies in Twine. It’s under the hood and that is where it belongs. We surface the value of semantic in lots of ways, with recommendations and the ability to create your own data types. Users can build their own ontology without knowing it’s ontology.”

In about three weeks, an update to Twine 1.0 will add a more advanced bookmarking tool and natural language crawling to improve relevancy. “Every page added to Twine will use natural language processing to determine what is the content versus ads, navigation, and other elements. We’ll put the full text in our search index and generate tags and create a summary and then crawl every link in the text one hop out and bring that content in as well,” Spivack said.

Twine has a social dimension in the way it leverages the wisdom of its members, via bookmarking, tagging, and shared connections. Underlying Semantic Web technologies provide concept mapping (such as interrelationships between topics or people) and more relevant and structured search results.

The Business Model & Differentiation

Twine plans to capitalize on the semantic technology to offer powerful marketing capability. The semantic technology is used to define objects “twines” and there relevant intelligence from the data. The define objects and be used against the social graph of users to develop sophisticated marketing opportunities based on powerful semantic technology for increased relevancy and effectiveness. Radar Networks/Twine has filed patents for its monetization concepts, including a way for users to market semantic objects.

Twine plans to unleash more of its semantic power, with richer support for structured data and a two-way API for getting data in and out of Twine that will attract application developers, Spivack said. In addition, Twine will introduce a new monetization scheme. “Twine will be to marketing what Google was to advertising,” he boasted.

“Advertising is pull-based, passive, and on the side of pages. Marketing is sponsored and highly relevant content that is targeted and delivered to someone in their in interest feeds. It will be clearly marked and users have to option to accept or reject it.”

“We can provide interesting socio-economics around the content that people collect, share, and buy, and build a one-to-one channel between marketers and users.”

Radar Networks was founded in 2003 by Nova Spivack, who co-founded EarthWeb (IPO: 1998)and also produced Dice (IPO: 2007). The company behind Twine, Radar Networks raised $13 million in Series B funding from Velocity Interactive, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Vulcan Capital.

Twine the Launch of the Interest Network

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