Startups

Ready for a Pearl Revolution?

I am a news junkie. I love meaningful, learning, long and everlasting articles, full of relevant analysis and …SENSE!

The Web is by far the most powerful media today, because its content is endless. But it is also the weakest media because this content is not properly organized or searcheable.

Today, what the all Web and its contributors give you primary access to is mainstream content.First for questions of belief: everybody foolishly believes in the wisdom of the masses.Second for technical reasons: it very easy to search and give visibility to mainstream content (the Diggs, the Delicious, etc).Third for a numbers game: we are better off polishing the quality of our contents to the extreme so that it could appeal to the masses (meaningful, learning and everlasting articles are exceptions now on online newspapers, which headlines have moved to ‘mass-appealing’ Britney Spears stories)

Pearltrees is going Alpha tomorrow, and I am REALLY excited about it, because this start-up is a true pionneer and is about to reveal a new powerful usage of the Internet. Pearltrees’ acknowledgment is simple: today everywhere you have content, you have editors.

Everywhere, BUT on the Internet!

News? At the NYT there are editors that select, analyze and organize news (content) for you every day. From this work they build a unique edition of information (the daily NYT ) that has a different meaning and approach that the Wall Street Journal has taken, although with the same original content (they have both worked with the same information but have came up with two different editorial lines). Art? Curators (editors) select, organize different pieces of art (content) to tell a story and build exhibitions around it. Music? Editors at Sony and BMG select, modify and organize songs (content) of artists to build a CD that tells a story.

What about the content out there on the Internet?

Today, who has the legitimacy to select the best content and impose their editorial line on the Internet? Certainly not the masses! Each of us should be able to built its own edition of the Web, because we all have a different approach and legitimacy.

“Pearltrees builds an active community of web editors.

Being a web editor now is just being at the very top of the web hype. Editing is a new activity that just does not exist on the web yet. In other media, editors comprise TV programmers, art curators,…
Now, we will all be able to create web programs for our own community.
In Pearltrees, web editors will:

- See their web navigations
- Create meaningful stories with their navigations
- Communicate their web stories
- Build the map of their stories
- Explore and enjoy the edited map of the web “

Pealtrees is a fantastic project. I use their tool every day to save the best content I find on the Internet (articles, videos, pictures, songs) organizing and playing with it, commenting and making notes; and finally building a story around it (creating editions) that I can share with the community.

What is the most powerful is that they allow me to search within the community and explore the editions that have been built around the same subject or themes as mine. My edition of the Web vs. the edition of other people, around same subjects. This is all BUT mainstream, and I love it!

I congratulate Patrice, Julien, Francois, Nicolas and the all Pearltrees team and wish them great success..they will soon be

© 2009 The Bridge.