Take one part Wikipedia, one part Flickr, one part Facebook and even a dash of Youtube, and what do you get?

The recipe bakes into a new online site called VineMe, a photograph website created by Josh Fleming, Tony Muse and Chris Taulborg, with consulting from Dwolla Corp. founder Ben Milne.

The premise is to use photos to tell a story about a person, place or thing throughout a timeline by combining ideas that other social media sites offer.

“We originally came up with the idea that everything is based on a timeline,” Fleming said. “The idea is you can see yourself throughout your whole life and fill in all those spaces. That’s how it started, but what we’re trying to do is get people to crowdsource (generate and label) content.”

The site, which was scheduled to launch on March 31, is a tool to upload photos. Each upload starts a “vine” of photos, designed to be interconnected with other vines. The theory: A vine is limitless.

It started with Muse’s idea to have a place to upload a wide range of old photos from his childhood through the present. On Facebook, he said, people can see a snapshot of who you are now, but not necessarily relate to the experiences you have had.

The social network side leads to an informational side and what the founders hope will become a worldwide search tool. Users are encouraged to tag photos with multiple descriptors. A Taylor Swift concert at Wells Fargo Arena could be tagged as “Wells Fargo,” “Taylor Swift,” “Des Moines” or a variety of things, along with the date. Then, when a user conducts a search using any of those tags, that photo will be among the search results. A refined option can cut the search to the user-rated best results.

The founding group tested a beta version of the site, and the results have been good, Fleming said. People are averaging about 12 minutes on the site, which as of last week had about 5,000 photos. He reasons that the time spent will go up as more photos are added. The site is starting out among a Des Moines contingent, but the group plans to expand the user base nationwide.

The key for users, Fleming said, is to immerse yourself in it. Once users upload photos and search for topics, they will get hooked.

“We think it will open people’s eyes to how connected the world really is,” Muse said.