“We're here to make a dent in the universe. Otherwise, why even be here? We're creating a completely new consciousness, like an artist, or a poet.” ~ Steve Jobs as portrayed by Noah Wyle in the opening scene of Pirates of Silicon Valley. Part of a New Year's greeting I sent to many Radarians and fellow Twinerians.

I've written volumes (or so it seems) on Radar Network's Twine. My first piece was published here on AO; it received over 4,000 views!! Shortly after the piece appeared I was accepted into the Twine private beta, since then becoming the most active participant in the beta. The two most active participants are myself and their Founder & CEO, Nova Spivack. As of this moment, I have contributed a total of 2,171 items, 562 items to my public Twine (plus numerous other unique items, mostly notes/messages, posted to the “you've got to be approved by Chuck” private “Twine Evangelism” and “Twine Business Development” Twines, both of which I manage), participate in 134 Twines and have 66 connections. I'm first in the number of contributed items (by far), first in the number of Twines (either managed or participated), second in the number of connections. (Nova has 86 connections; we share 39 connections.) On my God, I just realized that I'm the Robert Scoble of Twine!! ;-) (Note to myself: I need to get a life.)

I'm among a core group of private beta testers, including semweb (Semantic Web) industry luminaries Jim Hendler and Ivan Herman, plus stalwarts Mills Davis and James Huckenpahler, with Christian Faure a rising star among the testers. We've all been able to mix it up with the Radar Networks development team, which includes Chris Jones on the UX (user experience) side, Lew Tucker and Sonja Erickson on the infrastructure side, and Jim Wissner and Peter Royal on the semweb side. When you think of world-class semweb, you'll think of Jim Wissner and you couldn't find a better “Number One” than Peter. BTW, there are lurkers, of sorts, in the private beta. Among them are none other than Tim Berners-Lee and a father of AI, Stanford's Edward Feigenbaum; Tim, for one, knows what is going on at Radar Networks, “knows” as in first hand, in his face, up close and personal – and as recently as, well, yesterday. But, no more about this. Let's just say that it's safe to say that the gods of semweb are fully in the loop at Radar Networks. (Me. I'm just a fly on the wall. But Nova acknowledges that I'm Twine's top evangelist. “Amen to that, Brother Nova.” It's that evangelical Christian Left activist, preacher and philosopher/theologian streak in me.)

So, what's the big deal about Twine? OK, the alleged Steve Jobs hyperbole. But what does this mean?

I can sum it up by pointing you to two sites: http:/www.oneclicknetworking and http://www.interactions30.com (as in “Interactions 3.0”). “One-Click Networking & Discovery .. A Better, Smarter Web,” and “The Ginzu Knife of the World Wide Web.” Yes, I was being cute with this, but it really sums it up. Their official “Mission”: “Make the Web smarter.” (My emphasis.) Their official “Vision”: “A new generation of intelligent Web applications that help people share, organize and discover, powered by the Semantic Web.” (Once again, my emphasis.) Twine is NOT YAFW (Yet Another Facebook Widget); Twine is the commercial birth of Web 3.0.

The semweb part is the ginzu knife. (For our readers outside the reach of American infomercials, a ginzu knife is like a Swiss army knife on steroids, used primarily in cooking.) With semweb at its core, “the sky is no longer the limit” (to quote from a line in “2001”). Think of all the apps that were developed on the web as a platform. Semweb is just as revolutionary, with both the World Wide Web and the Semantic Web courtesy of Tim Berners-Lee & Co. And its their semweb core tech that is the foundation for Web 3.0. (Personally, I don't agree with the notion that the Semantic Web or AI is Web 3.0; IMO, Web x.y is about apps, not tech. But semweb is most likely the core of Web 3.0; AI will see its day in a Web 4.y+ world.)

You can just imagine some of the uses. How about social bookmarking? Just think, no more tagging!! You can still tag if you get the itch, but you don't have to tag. Bye, bye, del.icio.us. What about online dating? For the Hotornot.com or AdultFriendFinder crowd, maybe not. But there's a huge gap between Match.com and eHarmony, a gap that could easily be served by Twine. And I already mentioned the idea of bringing social networks to the next level. However, I don't view Twine as a replacement for Facebook or LinkedIn, but rather as something that will supplement – and work seamlessly within -- these social networking platforms.

At launch, expect Twine to offer the ultimate experience in online discussions. Let's try this on for size: “Twine is the smartest place for discussions on the Web.” Forget blogs and wikis for discussions: Twine is better. “Twine intelligently enriches and learns from discussions – making them more productive and useful to participants.”

• Twine can add any kind of information including documents, photos, videos, and bookmarks

  
  

• Twine learns, adapts and makes recommendations

  
  

• Twine automatically tags and links

  
  

• Twine offers smarter search, navigation & discovery (e.g., multimodal semantic search, but maybe not by launch)
  

  
  

• Twine works with email and RSS (both inbound and outbound)
  

  
  

• And Twine connects people based on shared interests

  
  

Finally, don't forget to vote for Twine in the Crunchies category for “Best technology innovation / achievement”. It's not just a vote for Twine, but a vote for semweb; it's a vote for a smarter web. VOTING ENDS TONIGHT @ MIDNIGHT PACIFIC STANDARD TIME.

As you've read, I'm totally jazzed by Twine. I'm an apps guy; Twine has a lot of cool apps. If you ever hear me say, “RDF triples” or use “objects” in public, you have permission to shoot me. The beauty of Twine is the simplicity and richness of the applications, all of them masked by complexity on the backend. Think Ockham's razor.

Based and living in China for the past four years (both in Beijing and Qingdao), David Scott Lewis is SVP with Startech Global Corporation, the outsourcing hub for Tsinghua University (China's MIT and Hu Jintao's alma mater) and Zytech Solar, a Going Green 100 winner. He is also a "Contributing Author" to SemanticReport.com.  For a free download of the new 27 page Executive Summary of the Semantic Wave 2008 Report: Industry Roadmap to Web 3.0 & Multibillion Dollar Market Opportunities authored by Mills Davis, click here.