You Might Want to Read This Article First: What is Twine and How Should I Use It? http://www.twine.com/item/11vmqch87-3p8/how-to-understand-twine

 

Getting Started With Twine

Welcome, you are now a "Twinerian" -- a member of the Twine community. There are a few steps we recommend you take to quickly start benefitting from what Twine has to offer.

 

Basic Usage

 

Fill out your profile so other users can learn about you. Use the "Account" link on the upper right and then go into "Profile." Make sure to add a photo too.

 

Join some of the Top 100 Twines. Go to the "Explore" page and select "Top 100 Twines." Click the twines that interest you and then Join them.

• Join at least 2 or 3 of the popular twines and then look at your Interest Feed on your home page.
  
• Notice how by joining them, you start getting updates from those twines. By joining twines you are effectively "mixing" the interests they cover into your Interest Feed.
• By joining a twine you are tapping into the collective intelligence of a group of like-minded people who are collaboratively scouring the Web for interesting, relevant information around their interests. Instead of tracking interests by yourself, you can use twines to leverage the combined brainpower of groups who share your interests.
  

 

Start tracking your Interest Feed. Your Interest Feed summarizes what's new and what people are discussing in all the twines you participate in. By joining twines about various interests you will start to get content from them in your Interest Feed (on your home page in Twine). 

• You can keep up with your Interest Feed via the Web by visiting it often using your browser.
  
• You can also get Interest Feed updates via email once a day (in your Account, select "Twine Digest" to set which twines you want email updates from).
• You can subscribe to your Interest Feed via a Feed Reader to get continuous updates. Use the "Get Feed" link at the top of your Interest Feed. (Note your feedreader must support authenticated feeds)

 

Start Twining! You are now all set up. Now just start keeping upwith your Interest Feed to find the items and discussions that you are interested in. You don't need to go to each twine you are in individually -- you can track them all from your personal Interest Feed.

By following the above steps you can quickly get up to speed with Twine and start using it to manage and share knowledge, track interests, and tap into collective intelligence, more productively on the Web.

 

Intermediate Usage

 

Get the bookmarklet. Once you have the bookmarklet you can begin to collect things for yourself and/or to share in Twine. To get it, use the link to Tools (soon to be changed to "Bookmarklet") on the bottom of any Twine page.

• If you want to bookmark something privately, just for yourself, simply don't select any twines to share it with in the bookmarklet. They will appear in your "My Items" page under "Added by Me."
• To share select twines in the list. You can multi-select using CTRL+Click in the list.
• When using the bookmarklet you can select text on the page before you click it and that text will automatically appear in the summary field.
• Notice that on some sites the bookmarklet will attempt to automatically scrape text and tags -- but it's always a good idea to check them to make sure they are correct before submitting them.

 

Start Adding Content. There are several ways to add content to Twine, and several reasons to do it. Some people just use Twine for personal bookmarking and notes. Others use it primarily for sharing and keeping track of interests with others. Some use it for lightweight collaboration and knowledge management, or for building communities of interest or communities of practice, or for all of these uses. It's up to you, but here are some ways to add content for any/all of these purposes:

• You can bookmark things in using the Twine This bookmarklet. Try it on the Wikipedia, YouTube videos, Amazon books, Flickr images, Typepad and Wordpress blogs, or other sites. You will notice that what is created in Twine is different depending on what you are bookmarking (for a book, a Book item is created, for a video, a Video item is created, etc.).
• You can email messages, URLs, and file attachments in to yourself via your personal post-by-email address, or to the post-by-email address for any twine. This is especially handy from mobile devices or if you are simply too busy to use the bookmarklet
• You can add comments on any item in Twine that allows commenting. Discussions are one of the primary activities in Twine. Feel free to jump in!
• You can author original content directly within Twine: Within your My Items page, as well as within the pages of any twine, you can select the "Add Item" menu (near the tabs), to author things like Notes and other types of content.

 

Advanced Usage

 

There are many additional ways to use Twine that will only be listed briefly here. You can learn more about them in other places in Twine.

• Connect with people in Twine to begin sharing directly.
  
• Search all of Twine via the search box on the upper right.
• Search within any particular twine by filtering your search to just look in that twine using the "Twines" filter on search pages.
  
• Search for particular types of things (just twines, or just notes, etc) using the Types filter on search pages.
• Add semantic tags using the tags panels.
• Click on personalized recommendations to begin discovering other people, twines and items that relate to your interests. As you use Twine it learns about your interests and starts suggesting things you may like.
• Make your own Public twine to share things you find with the public.
  
• Start your own public or private twines and invite others to them to build teams or communities.
  
• Get Feeds from twines, items or searches to track other interests.