is a web-based visual content curation service that launched two years ago, and I was one of the first to publish about it before its official launch at LeWeb in December 2009.
At that time, I labeled the web application as a “visual mapping of the web”, now that content curation and the “Interest Graph” are becoming increasingly fashionable, describing it as a “visual content curation service” should be more accurate.
The app allows users to collect web pages and arrange them in pearls and pearl trees (topics), they can also share them and collaborate on others’ pearltrees using the feature “Team” that was released in 2010. According to the company, the service currently has over 200,000 users that collected over 10 million pearls and is growing at a 15% rate.
Pealrtrees seems to have been designed for the iPad before it even existed! I advise users to browse the app on the iPad rather than on the desktop to reach its full potential. The multi touch interface is great, it is a lot faster to manipulate pearls and pearltrees with the fingers than with a mouse, additionally, the tablet screen size is perfect for the visual interface.
Besides the multi touch interface, Pearltrees for iPad offers an impressive new feature called Visual Discovery (check the video, toward the end), it allows to visually explore the interest graph of the Pearltrees’ community by simply moving around the screen, new pearls will appear with content related to the closest pearl that was previously displayed. As we all know, an image worth a million words, so check out the video demo performed by Pearltrees co-founder Patrice Lamothe, to see the feature in action (still image is below).
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