Super-exciting news this morning as we’ve finally take the stabilisers off Metrotwin, British Airways’ new social recommendation service that we’ve been working on since March. The site has been in private beta and today we pressed the button and brought the password/log-in screen down to make the site accessible to everyone.

Metrotwin has been a collaboration between Made by Many, BBH and Agency.com. We led the service and interaction design and worked with BBH to create the network of bloggers and online communities who provide the recommendations. The site is a social utility rather than a social networking site: it’s an online community that treats London and New York as a continuum and it’s aimed at anyone living in or travelling between the two cities who’s struggling to navigate the vast volume of web content about these cities. If you’ve ever tried to use the Web to plan a trip to either city you’ll understand - so many web pages, so little time. These must be two of the most written about, blogged about, photographed and videoed pairs of cities anywhere online.

That idea of pairing the two cities has been developed into something that we got really excited about: social twinning. When you listen to people explaining the other city to each other you hear it: “What’s the Harvey Nicks of New York?”, “Shoreditch is kinda like Williamsburg…”. There is a fuzzy, collective understanding about how each city maps on to the other. These are sibling cities - very similar and yet very different. Within this weird love:hate rivalry (always respectful, it has to be said) there is real social currency. The fact is that I have more in common with people in New York City than with the good folks of Dagenham (no offence).

The site you’ll see today at Metrotwin.com is just the beginning. It’s the core. We’re in a good place to push the site in new directions - more social features, like a ‘People’ page and the ability to follow other people; or more playful ways to bring the idea of twinning to the fore; or new ways to visualise the city and to take Metrotwin with you inside an iPhone or printed out on paper; or perhaps a souped-up ‘Neighbourhoods’ view of the site. There are already some very cool features, including ‘Metrotwin Recommends’ - a collaborative filtering tool that looks at what you like and recommends places you haven’t been to yet; and the ‘Metrotwin Index’ - which provides a people-powered view of the best of the long tail of both cities. Who knows? The plan is to watch real people play with it first - we’re going to see what sticks, look at what happens and make changes and new releases based on all of that.

Many, many thanks to all involved - especially everyone at Made by Many and BBH who have worked on it. We’ll be following this post up with some more about the technology used for Metrotwin and the way we’ve all worked together on the project. Tally ho!