22 Sep 2016 Startup company looks to untangle the Internet for users

Image courtesy of DOT.world.

A Dutch start-up company, DOT.world, launched on Sept. 21, seeks to enable people and organizations to build their own Internet platforms, empowering them to organize and curate information on any topic.

“The Internet is a teeming tangle of billions of pages, where brilliant information is buried in dubious content. All the information is there, somewhere; you just can’t find the best and most relevant quickly,” said the company in its launch announcement.

DOT.word said it wants to redesign how people and organizations interact with online content. It aims to filter out Internet noise via topic-specific platforms that reveal the best on that topic, empowering online communities and organizations to share, organize, and curate content.

The filtering process enables the “crowd” to create a clear structure and curate the content. The platforms ultimately help people save time by providing them with quick access to the most relevant information on specific topics, according to the company.

“Already before our official launch, we have been providing platforms on topics such as food security (for a U.N. organization), startups (for the Dutch Chamber of Commerce) and the Zika virus. The platforms connect experts and the crowd and enable them to share, organize, discuss and rank the most relevant information on these topics,” said DOT.world.

It’s the next phase of evolution from directories and aggregators, expanding beyond hard-to-navigate lists of links on sites like Reddit, or the encyclopedia structure of wikis, into a visually engaging, dynamic, organized world of information, where quality and relevance rule, the announcement said.

“No matter what the topic is, the content is clearly structured and you can drill down and quickly see what others find most helpful and interesting,” says DOT.world founder Wim Korevaar. “In this age of information overload, structured platforms allowing experts and the crowd to curate and filter information are key,” for both consumers and businesses.

The most characteristic feature is the platform’s navigation. Via the platform’s navigation structure, users can filter away uninteresting information and home in on the subtopic that most interests them. When browsing, users see the best-related content, all shared and ranked by other users. The more people contribute, the better the quality of the platform becomes.

Users and organizations can register platforms on the topics they feel most passionate about. All it takes is choosing a subdomain name (cooltopic.dot.world, for example) and a topic. Once people are invited on the platform, they can start sharing, organizing, and ranking web content related to the topic. As content is added, users can curate, deciding what’s worthwhile by upvoting or downvoting the content.

“We believe that not a single person, a single company, or a single algorithm can organize all content online and determine the best on a specific topic, but together we can,” Korevaar said.