One of the most talked about semantic web tools is Twine, from Radar Networks. Twine dominated many of the discussions at last week's successful Web 3.0 Conference & Expo in Santa Clara, Calif., (see "Semantic Web Turns to the Mainstream.") The cutting-edge solution was often lauded during the conference as a semantic web pioneer that's doing it right.
After a long and productive beta process, Twine went live today. Nova Spivack, CEO or Radar, says that Twine is on the road to serious "monetization," as Jennifer Zaino reported in her story today:
"We are a site where people go to discover stuff, but the level of engagement is more like a social network. That combination should monetize well with our new form of direct marketing," Spivack says.
In early 2009, Spivack, who says Twine has already signed up large national advertisers for testing, plans to deliver sponsored content -- whether for products or events -- right within interest feeds. Not in a sidebar, and not segregated at the top, where he contends they are easy to ignore.
"That's marketing, not advertising," he says, noting that sponsored content will be labeled as such. "I think ads are a pull-based model where you may or may not see them. Marketing is more push-based, where it gets sent to you," with the idea being that this is targeted content that a particular user will want to receive -- and have control over whether or not to receive it.
If, for example, Twine figures out from certain interests and bookmarks that you are looking for a new car, Twine can recommend things related to the kind of new car you want, but once you buy a vehicle you can indicate that new car updates are no longer an interest for you.
Twine now has a revamped interface, and features a ton of usability improvements, most of them suggested by users during the beta process. Improvements include: new, more intuitive navigation system; public content within Twine is now indexed by search engines; batch bookmark import from Delicious, Digg, and browsers; improved recommendation engine, and the ability to invite people to Twine from online email address books.
Check out Jennifer Zaino's coverage of this semantic web pioneer at Semanticweb.com.
Comment and Contribute
