The concept of “Information Trails” is based largely on the idea of Information Foraging (Pirolli and Card, 1999) and Information Scents (Chi, Pirolli and Pitkow, 2000).

Information Foraging using Information Scents is a well accepted area of research in human computer interaction (HCI). In Information Foraging, nodes are (mostly) the Web pages, and trails are (mostly) the cookies crumbs left inadvertently by users. Thus an information forager is more like a detective piecing together (foraging) the left-behind crumbs (scents), in order to reconstruct the trails left by a web user.

Information Trails borrowed the concept of Information Foraging and used it in online games.

This may sound similar to the idea behind the browser plug-in called TrailFire, which has also picked up on the idea of “Trails.”

Discover Trails: By leaving “marks”, which are essentially electronic notes, on individual web pages and adding your comments you can guide people out onto the web and help them discover what you already know.

Making trails is easy. Place a ‘trail mark’ (like a ‘post-it’ note) on a page with your comments. A trail mark can contain text, images, videos and other media types. When you give several marks the same ‘trail name’ you are forming your own navigation path on the web. You can then share your “Trail” (your own navigation path across the web) with your friends (private) or anyone on the Web (public).

Thus, in Trailfire, users create electronic notes (called “marks”) and name several of them using a same “trail name.” The trail name (like a social bookmark) can then be shared with others (public or private trails), and be followed along like the trail checkpoints on a hiking map. Thus, you are consciously marking the Web (like an animal marking its territory with scents) and announcing to the world to come follow the trail you have created.

On the surface, Trailfire may sound like Information Trail, but the basis of the concept are vastly different.