The ‘Contacts’ sidebar helps Nick discover new channels created by his personal social network.
The ‘List’ presents all aggregated entries from channels subscribed by Nick. Colors play an important role. Entries in blue are incoming entries, i.e. entries that have been received. Entries in red are outgoing entries, i.e. entries that have been sent. And entries in purple are entries that have been shared.
If Nick wants to share a specific entry, he may do so by tagging the entry appropriately. The Figure shows that this particular entry is already tagged with Science. He may add new tags by selecting them from his own tag cloud, or he may create new ones by typing them. When he syndicates this entry, he publishes this entry to the channels identified by these tags. Everyone subscribed to these channels will receive a notification.
Nick has associated Debbie’s Environment tag with his Science tag (i.e. he has created a taglink between the two channels). Every time Debbie publishes something tagged with Environment, these entries are automatically tagged with Science for Nick.
Thus, for users to share information, they don’t have necessarily to share the same concepts. All they have to do is to show how their friends’ concepts are associated with their own concepts.
It is important to remember that entries received are not published in Nick’s channels automatically unless they have been approved and shared by Nick himself.
