Ofamind and Twine

I was flattered to learn about twine.com the other day. Twine is the long-simmering product of Radar Networks and is remarkably similar to Ofamind in many ways. A bit of digging shows that they used Wikipedia as a basis for their tagging engine. Some reviews have been positive while others less so.

Still, I consider it a vindication of sorts, though I think they will have a hard road business-wise if they believe twine.com has a massive audience appeal. I will just mention that I interviewed with a startup called Backflip in 2000 that went nowhere as well. The business proposition for these kinds of technologies is when they provide real business value to specific knowledge worker communities--when they serve vertical domains to address specific problems.

A minor footnote: I chatted with Radar Network's Nova Spivak several times about collaboration several years back and suspect that there was a bit of, ehhhh, influence of Ofamind on Twine's development (based also on watching my weblogs). I'm just amused that I beat them to the plate with one consultant and three other ongoing engagements simultaneously. Are there diminishing returns beyond a few agile minds in what Bessemer VCs refer to as our new capital efficient web marketplace?