Web Links Archive as Networks - Pearltrees

Browsing the web all day long means coming across great stuff and additional branches and topics to be explored. As it is with wikipedia with the linkages you could spend days just clicking from one key word to another literally surfing on a wave of ephemeral interests.

As it is with most things that are fun and exciting, you haven't got enough time to enjoy them just now or at all. To be on the safe side just save them for later to come back to it. However, bookmark lists ten to get long and complicated and in most cases, as they grow, change topics or should be split into more details categories.

The new Pearltrees Beta 0.8.1 offers an interesting visual platform for the organisation of all sorts of bookmarks. It is basically the networking approach of organising content. But it is clever enough to include the social aspect of it. Maybe it is the next generation of Diggs, Delicious and Stumbles meeting twitter and facebook sort of thing.


Image taken from infostetics / Snaphot of the pearltrees interface with a little tree, pearls and the preview window.

Each weblink is a pearl on your tree, you are the gardener growing the tree. Branches can be replaces, divided or reordered. All very intuitively graphically on this one plain. New content is created via the toolbar in your browser, directly via twitter or typed on the plain. Quite flexible actually. Imediately you think an importing feature would be great. Well there is one! your delicious log can be directly imported. This means you can export your bookmarks to delicious, create an account if you haven't got one to get all your bookmarks straight away into it as large trees.

The content of each pearl is available as preview on the left hand side and a click brings the page up, in a pearltrees frame to jump back any time.

The social networking bit is automatic and straight forward, who ever link the same content is related in the network. So a relationship defined by content or likes. Clicking on the little pearl sitting on the side of the original pearl brings up everybody else who likes this very same content.



The networking is extended by the option to create groups or teams and work on pearl trees together. Collaboration and project stuff made simple very neat.

Its really the move away from the list that is so promising. Very much like the prezi is the move away from the slide with its defined size and shape, this tool allows for a more visual and interactive organisation of bookmarks and links. It is still in development and some of the graphics could be streamlined, but its definitely worth starting to integrate this tool into the online workflow.