Tagging as a comodity?
I've had an interesting conversation last night with an engineering lead in one of the mega-portal companies. While it wasn't really the topic of the conversation, he said something that got me thinking. He said:
"Tagging is by now a commodity".
Is that really so?
In my eyes, tagging, while not really a novelty anymore, is far from being a commodity. The vast majority of internet users (outside the valley of course :) never heard of it... as I noted in earlier post, I still find myself explaining quite often to people who never heard of it - what tagging is about and why it makes sense. And by "people", I mean pretty internet-savvy people.
Browsers are commodity. Search is commodity (is it?). Tagging is still at the beginning of the adoption curve, still firmly in the hype area.
It's going to take a while before the dust settles down, and tagging will become a commodity - to be used only where appropriate (no, tag clouds do not always make sense) and with clear predictable user expectations and usage patterns.
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2 comments:
Hi, interesting post.
You're right, IMO, to say that outside the Valley people don't know of tags. In fact, if your life isn't about surfin' the Web for info -that is, if you don't live in the Web2 hype-, you don't really care for tags.
In what regards the "Tagging is a commodity" statement, well, your friend might be right : if in fact only "hyped" users "tag", you cannot say it isn't a commodity, as it's a currency in the "web2 hyped sphere".
Tagging as a real, palpable, social and human phenomena, is yet to come. Today you're just playing with Ranking, Hits, Stats and of course, Hype :) Knowledge is still not there.
So I'd say tagging will cease to be a commodity to become a "way". The way I see it, "Tagging is *still* a commodity".
x33x (?), point well made. Tagging is is a commodity if you live in the "Web 2.0 sphere". Do we think it's worthwhile giving a shot at making it an appreciated commodity for a substantial part of the net users out there? Or would we rather keep this new - and IMO, valuable - toy just to our hyped selves?
Re Knowledge - also agree. Someone gotta go and get that knowledge thing working :)
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