Online Communities

I have to say that trying to keep a blog going is not the easiest thing in the world. There is so much information that is currently sitting out on the internet, I fell like I am just duplicating what is there. But I guess the purpose of a blog is to describe things from your own personal point of view and if others find that interesting or helpful, then it is useful. I do think that the more I post probably the easier this will become and I hope that my style of writing will develop as well!
One such site that was recommended to me a while back by a colleague is Twine. Twine is a tool that in their own words "helps you organize, share and discover information around your interests, with networks of like-minded people." As someone relatively new to the semantic workplace and the online community in general, I have found it difficult to get involved and have sometimes wondered at people who rave about online communities.

Anyway, I thought that Twine might be a good place to start. So what does Twine bring to the table? Firstly you can subscribe to groups of interest. People have set up discussions about an inordinate number of subjects ranging from sports and celebrities to internet technologies. I have joined a number of groups that discuss the semantic web, ontologies etc. In subscribing to these groups, I get sent an e-mail on a daily basis that shows me what new comments and links have been added to my twines within these groups. There is an ocean of knowledge out there both in published web pages and from the people that contribute to these groups on a regular basis and I am learning an awful lot. That said, I don’t always find the time to read all of the links that get sent to my daily digest of news, which can be frustrating. Also some of the articles are very technical or concern a particular technology that I have never heard of, rendering the article less than helpful for a novice such as myself.
Secondly I did think that being a member of twine would help me get to know more people within my world of Information Management, but usually people don't invite you to link with them. You have to ask them to link with you. It's an online version of going to conferences. You can stand in the corner and observe and listen in to others' conversations or you can get stuck in and introduce yourself to others. My own personal tendencies mean I steer towards the anonymous observer, but I do think that you get out what you put in and the more you get involved the more the community will become an invaluable tool. So that is my own personal challenge at the moment, to get more involved.

As well as being a community and a repository for information from others, it is a place where you can add your own information. You can either add bookmarks (or Bookmarklets as Twine refers to them) to your “My Items” section for yourself only or you can bookmark web pages that you would like to add to Twines for others to view. The one big advantage of using Twine for this is that it automatically tags the pages you add, which increases the value of that information. I must confess that I have not explored this functionality fully yet, but will hopefully do so in the near future.