I have written about Pearltrees since the web application was in private beta back in April 2009, before the official launch in late 2009. To date, the free service counts more than 500,000 contributors and more than 25 million pearls.
Although I am not an avid user, however I love its aesthetics and the ease of use of its graphic interface. Content curation is a trending topic in the internet industry and Pearltrees is surely one of the most innovative startup to offer content curation and social networking based on the interest graph.
Today, Pearltrees launched its iPhone application nine months after the release of the iPad version.
All versions allow users to organize content found on the web in pearltrees, and each pearl is in fact a web page. The iPad version introduced the ability to discover new pearls and pearltrees with a touch interface, making them appear while swiping the screen. When in discovery mode, the new pearls that show up next to the ones you just swiped relate to similar topics, you literally browse your “interest graph” or “interest tree”.
With the release of the iPhone application, the company introduced new features:
– Optimized interface for the small screen: a revamped interface to fit the small screen offers a the pearl view and the reader view to browse from page to page with a swipe of the finger.
– Offline Mode: it is now possible to access the Pearltrees stored in your account offline
– Add photos: the previous version only allowed to add web page as pearls, now you can add images to your trees and share them.
– Take notes and organize them: people can now add text-based note to their Pearltrees.
Knowing the popularity of Evernote, these two last features will make the usage even more interesting and valuable. As CEO Patrice Lamothe, puts it “
it’s truly like having a magical library in your pocket”.
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