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TellmeTwin Analyzes Your Likes & Dislikes to Find Your Other Halves (The Startup Review)


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20-Word Description

On TellmeTwin you map your character to find your personality "twins" - people who think like you - and use their profile to discover.

CEO's Pitch

TellmeTwin aims to be one of the Internet's most dynamic tools for collecting and analyzing large amounts of user generated data. On and outside our website you will create and rate literally anything you love or hate. It can be an architect, painter, movie, celebrity, favorite food, travel spot... The list goes on. You can also take personality tests. Through deep data mining we match you with your Good or Evil twins. As you travel the Web you take them with you, get their recommendations, or stay in touch. Your profile is your asset.

Mashable's Take

Differences of opinion can be good to help people step away from the familiar and experiment with the new and the unknown, but as is our natural habit, we like people who like what we like. In celebration of that fact, TellmeTwin presents its recommendation engine to the world.

Nearly the entire premise of TellmeTwin is to document what you like, what you don’t, and the degree of intensity with which you regard such feelings. Atop that sits the membership complex, where you essentially discover others who the service determines you might like to have a beer with. Or maybe just a simple chat and a point in the right direction. This is for everything from media to food to artists, actors, automobiles, and most any name, object or item in between. TellmeTwin is designed to house a community to rate, discuss, argue over, as well as bookmark or buy if want or need should enter the picture.

The fodder provided is already quite extensive. CEO Einar Sigvaldason, based in the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik, claims that “users are pouring in” following its official opening last week. That’s likely because the user experience is fairly well designed. Some might find it to be rather ordinary. And in several ways, it is. There is little that is unique about the dimensions of its pages. But interact with members enough and you could have yourself involved to the point that the standard elements you see are secondary to you and your “twins.”

At first glance, you’re shown a search bar and tabbed sections, followed by a menu of “Popular Items,” arranged by rating, recent picks, and alphabetical organization. A drop-down list of categories is also present. As for the main subject matter, the way items are previewed is to emphasize volume. But it is somewhat peculiar nonetheless. What does this mean, exactly? Well, you might think that the five-star feature below product names and images would be filled to some level. Instead they are entirely blank, awaiting your input.

Now, in some sense this can be thought of as providing a more personal (and less passive) view to the user. A sort of “don’t rely on others to think for you” framework, so to speak. But the juxtaposition of the buttons for ‘Buy’ and ‘Bookmark’ next to the rating bar seems strange, then. If you’re not going to see what popular opinion is, and you have to rate it yourself, why would you make a relatively random purchase, or save the pick for future consideration? You’d want to delve a bit deeper before spending any cash, no? (To be entirely forthcoming, clicking on the shopping cart icon won’t take you to a checkout counter. But the arrangement within the "Popular Items" menu still could use an edit.)

On the whole, I have to say TellmeTwin’s delivery of unique pages filled with basic descriptions, columns for proponents and contrarians, plus placements for YouTube clips, images, tags, comments, and an Amazon shopping connection to boot, is substantive. It’s a hybrid that could find its niche rather quickly. It’s as much a content discovery mechanism as it is a place for casual discourse in the wide world of popular culture. There are some things that might do with some changes, but for a launch that made its official public debut just days ago, TellmeTwin is a curiosity that many will find to their liking.


Sponsored By: Sun Startup Essentials

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