It got skewered at last year’s TechCrunch50. Then when it finally launched in private beta, it “accidentally deleted” all of its initial user accounts. But iMindi is back and it wants you to help it build the Mindex.
iMindi wants to be a Twitter on steroids. Actually, it is the exact opposite of Twitter. It is more for people who want to have lengthy discussions and explore topics deeply. Instead of a 140-character limit, it has a 20,000-character limit.
You can have threaded discussions about different topics, follow people, and topic categories (”think tanks”). You dump in your thoughts or excerpts from articles, then iMindi does a semantic analysis of the concepts and connect those “thoughts” with other similar ones (this is what they mean by the Mindex). In the private beta, iMindi had some mind map visualizations, but it has abandoned those in the interest of simplicity.
Now all iMindi needs is for people to fill its database so that it can start linking people’s thoughts. I kind of think that going for long-form, blog-like discussions is going to be harder for people to get into than short bursts of micro-information. But it might appeal to people who want something deeper than Twitter.
Still seems pretty pointless.
Or we could all just use WooferTime (http://woofertime.com/)….with it’s 1400 character minimum, and general focus on being silly. Already at 545 Million characters as of this morning
Can see scope for Google wave to take up the index-building concept…
How easy Twitter can reproduce such functionality with their system? Quite easy, I guess and perhaps it wouldn’t take them too long for a timeframe to complete such project. I am keen to hear the views of whoever their VCs are.
Uhm…. so it’s a forum with a few fancy features. Big deal there are plenty of those already. Talk about late to the party.
This is what I am thinking. I wish I was in Silicon Valley…
A technology in search of a problem? Maybe they are trying to address the wrong market. If their technology is good, Fortune 100s and government agencies might be interested, no?
> Now all iMindi needs is for people to fill its database so that it can start linking people’s thoughts.
LOL.
Dear Fellow Cyber Information Superhighway Users:
I made a Long Distance from my home in Arlington, VA to Chicago, IL. The cost was only 12 cents per minute. I wanted to ask about how to use the calendar function on my new PDA to plan out my days. They told me that I can Download the instructions from the World Wide Web. Wow, what technology. I asked the typist at work if we have the World Wide Web at our company. She said, no, but we have something very advanced called the Intranet. She proceeded to use the Personal Computer to send a CC Mail to someone for advice. He said that he does have access to the Information Super Highway at his home, and that he would go home and Dailup a connection, at which time he would Download the manual for my PDA. This is just incredible. He even says he Surfs the Web all the time.
Sincerely,
/electronically signed/
Prince Momar
PS, would anyone like to become Penpals with me via Telnet or IRC (Internet Chat Relay)?
Company without direction or definition of what they do exactly. Aka fucked company – throw it in the dead pool.
If they are looking to “explore topics deeply” why have a character limit at all?
I like iMindi. Connecting your thoughts to thoughts of others, sounds dull, but is actually pretty neat.
And Adam is an awesome guy (ceo!) He uses the product and interacts with the users. My first iMindi post was a list of what I liked, what I didn’t like, and where I thought iMindi could improve. Within the day, Adam had read, responded, and merged it with his own thoughts. A participating CEO is always a huge plus to me.
Thank you Timmy.
A little confusing if you ask me. Hey, you never know.
Funny, it’s still pretty confusing for the avg user. I get regular people who ask “how do I use twitter” what do you mean how do you use twitter? you F’n type in the input box and press update. I can’t imagine the questions they will have for Imindi.
In any case, it still looks like a horrible design. Hire a creative team and then submit your tech crunch story, kk thnx bai
next …
I’ve mentioned this to Adam before…
There is definite value in realizing and analyzing that “connection.” I dont know about their approach, but knowledge of these connections will eventually help power search and info browsing.
imagine – we usually search linearly – we choose a topic and dive down, when in fact there can be a parallel bodies of knowledge, highly related, that our keywords simply didnt lead us to find.
this is actually where i think the mindex can come in handy – informing me about either the parent body of knowledge or the parellel body of knowledge during my infoseek.
infoseek- haha
I love it. Full disclosure – I liked what they were doing at TC50; they just barked completely up the wrong tree with the presentation. Right now people are using disparate applications as an ad hoc solution for something like this. LinkedIn,(limited to your circle) – and the pursuit of thoughts, questions, answers and ideas drives the entire blogosphere. This is much more direct. It may take a while to build the Borg but it could be a dynamic kind of wikipedia (not for idea horders). This is exactly where Twitter is limited, (albeit not most of the time or for most of the people).
Thank you Kathryn.
iMindi is like slow food. One day we may all get our attention spans back and really want to chew on stuff.
I am one of the few people who truly understand Imindi, its motivation, its goal, and its methodology. Be honest, the product is much more profound than it looks like now. And the service could be very valuable and practical. The Imindi founders have great mind on producing a service that may open a new door of knowledge management and release a great deal of wealth production.
But it still needs a few work to help the naive users understand why and how they may gain value by using the service.
– yihong
Thank you, Yihong.
Thank you, Yihong.