Pearltrees releases a new version, without any pearls nor trees. The Paris-based startup founded in 2009 once declared: “We focus on the visual potential of Pearltrees to let people dive deeply into their interests and nearly feel them”. Their product, offering a digital curation tool, was unique because of the visual interface voluntareely original: links and folders symbolized by rounded pearls attached together like the branches of a tree. Today, pearls and trees have disappeared to make room for a brand new and larger organisation tool. Pearltrees Gets a New Look, New Features and New Premium Tiers. Pearltrees, the social curation service that helps you organise Web content, photos and notes (‘pearls’) into mindmap-style ‘trees’, is today unveiling a new look, new features for paying users and revised pro account tiers.
Pearltrees was launched in December 2010 and now boasts two million monthly active users, collecting over 50,000 links every day. The new UI, codenamed ‘Asimov’ by the French startup, is designed to provide a coherent, simpler experience across the Web, iOS and a forthcoming Android version. Pearltrees 2.0 Launches with a Brand New User Interface. Today Pearltrees officially separated itself from its unique visual interface made of pearls and pearltrees, finally succumbing to the trend of Pinterest-like user experience.
It might be more practical for the majority of users to sort and collect content with the new Pearltrees 2.0, however, some people might regret the innovative former interface that allowed to discover related content rapidly by browsing an “ocean” of Pearls. Users still have the possibility to go back to the “pearly” version accessible from the menu in the settings section. Now the Pearltree has been replaced by the “Collection” which is basically a “folder” (or a board) containing various types of content of a topic, for instance, you can collect web pages, images, and notes, just like you can do with Evernote and Pinterest. A better look into Pearltrees 'Meaning' feature. Pearltrees Develops its New Interface Further with 'Meaning' Content and file curation and sharing platform Pearltrees has been updated today with new features that include ‘Meaning’, a new organization system.
‘Meaning’ is based on a traditional grid and allows users to drag and drop content into collections that can be shared with others and collaborated on with real-time synchronization. Pearltrees tells us that it hopes the new layout will encourage more collaboration between users. The company may have a point – a conventional grid could well take less time for new users to adapt to than Pearltrees’ old ‘tree of pearls‘ look that it moved away from earlier this year, even if it’s not quite as unique to look at.
The France-based company’s video below shows Meaning in action: