Blogger labels and Technorati tags

Several weeks ago I've upgraded my blog from the old blogger interface to the new one. It was quite painful at the time, but hey, how can I not try a new toy.

The new blogger interface supports tags labels. The labels are even marked with the Rel-Tag microformat.

Too bad that the migration process did not migrate my Technorati tags (which are also marked with Rel-Tag) to Google labels. It would have been a considerate move on Google's part, especially when they took their time adding this now-standard rel-tag support.

So, I went and manually edited the older posts, copying the Technorati tags to that nice comfy Labels box.

And now Blogger is republishing my entire feed.

Oh well. Sorry for the mess!

"28% of Net users tag" ?

David Weinberger, a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society (and one of my favorite RSS feeds) points on Joho the Blog to a new Pew Internet & American Life Project report, by Lee Rainie, and summarizes it with the title "28% of Net users tag".

Back when we started Yedda, the choice to go with free form tagging was a non-trivial one. Tagging was not yet mainstream, and the concept often met objections from early testers.

Still, we chose to go with free form tagging because we strongly believed that this is the only approach that can support the dynamic, ever-evolving nature of human interests & knowledge.

However, we quickly noticed that the word "tag" often resulted in a "huh?" blank stare, so one compromise that we did make is renaming it from "Tags" to "Topics" – surprisingly enough (or not), this choice had an immediate positive impact on people's acceptance of this approach.

"28% of Net users tag" sounds great. It sounds very mainstream, and it makes me feel good about our choice. But further reading reveals that the actual question that was asked is:

Please tell me if you ever use the internet to categorize or tag online content like a photo, news story, or a blog post

Well, categorization is very different from tagging. In fact, the word is often used to describe a process that, while having the same objective, is quite the opposite of free form tagging. (Well, in Wikipedia-speak, the term categorization applies to both activities. But you get my drift. I assume that the people who answered this question did not consult with Wikipedia first).

So, while the fact that %28 of Net users actually make the effort to add that meta-data to their content and to other people content (be it in the form of categories or of free-form tags) is great, I don't think it can be summarized with "28% of Net users tag".

It'd be interesting to see a similar report focusing on free form tagging. Pew?

Technorati Tags: Tagging David+Weinberger Yedda

Flickr Machine Tags

Flickr recently announced a new feature called "machine tags". From their announcement:

"Machine tags" is the technical term for the extra hamsters we've added to the Flickr servers to formalize how these sorts of tags are treated. I've included a "Ceci n'est pas un FAQ" below with all the details.

Machine tags follow a lightweight format:

namespace:predice=value

The namespace defines a class or a facet that a tag belongs to ('geo', 'flickr', etc.) The predicate is name of the property for a namespace ('latitude', 'user', etc.) The value is, well, the value.

Like tags, there are no rules for machine tags beyond the syntax to specify the parts of a machine tag

Tags that follow this format are automatically grouped under "machine tags" in the Flickr user interface, and can be hidden or shown by the user.

Machine tags, while not having a name, have been around for a while, their usage driven by people's urge to organize tags and give them specific semantics - and then, to build applications on top of this, assuming this specific semantics. I've discussed this a while ago, when I was younger. Back then, I suggested the name "applitags" for this feature, and suggested a slightly different format for differentiating Machine Tags (or applitags) from People Tags:

x:namespace.tag[=value]

I do wish the Flickr folks would have gone a step further and formalized the namespacing issue as well, as this would have made software built on top of Machine Tags more reliable. Still, this is an important move, coming from one of the tags-trend-setting players.

Are we re-building XML from the ground up all over again though?

Technorati Tags: flickr Machine+Tags applitags XML tagging

Delicious Aroma

Library Stuff pointed to Delicious Aroma (a.k.a deli.ckoma), a service provided by Philipp Keller.

The service collects stats about delicious. It seems like a valuable source of information for all tag-o-philes out there.

I found the "tags per bookmark" chart interesting:

Note that the majority of bookmarks have 1-2 tags associated with them. What do you think this number implies? Does it indicate efficient tagging, or does it indicate that the art of tagging has not been mastered yet?

In any case, it's a valuable service. Phillip also provides the raw data if you'd like to perform your own analysis.

Technorati : folksonomy, social bookmarking, statistics, tag, tagging, web2.0
Del.icio.us : folksonomy, social bookmarking, statistics, tag, tagging, web2.0

y.ah.oo!

Yahoo! acquired del.icio.us yesterday, proving once again that among the big 4, they are the one who actually "get it".

Joshua's announcement on del.icio.us was aptly titled "y.ah.oo!".

They couldn't have made a better choice of course. Despite its often-discussed shortcomings, and maybe somewhat because of them, del.icio.us has the liveliest, most vibrant and active community from the social bookmarking crowd. The gentleness track record that Yahoo demonstrated with Yahoozation of Flickr might help making sure that this community won't walk away.

Walking away should be a real concern - since switching from one social bookmarking service to another is very, very easy today.

Reminder: Yahoo introduced their own del.icio.us-like service, My Web 2.0, not so long ago. The service was not as successful as you'd expect, with "only 424K saved pages and about a quarter of that in tags". I said back then: "… might save a lot of time in those VC weekly investment committee meetings". I guess that was somewhat premature :)

It'd be interesting to see what will the result of this ongoing process - the Flickrization of Y.ah.oo!. One thing is sure - with so many tagged web objects, and, even more important, so much information on which users act as a de-facto authority on what's interesting, Yahoo!'s search engine should get quite a boost in the relevancy of its results.

Now that my photos are on Yahoo's Flickr and my bookmarks on Yahoo's del.icio.us, will Yahoo be able to get me - and, slightly more important, others :) - to move from typing "google" when I think web search to typing - hmm... what is the URL for Yahoo's search thingie? Maybe I should start memorizing it..

There is something poetic about this battle between the two giants, with one betting on algorithms and server farms, and the other betting on people.

A different way to look at it: Google is about empowering people through the machine. Yahoo is about empowering people through people, with the machine as an aggregator. Oh yeah, and Amazon, making an attempt at empowering the machine through people :)


Technorati : delicious, flickr, google, amazon, search, my web, tagging, yahoo
Del.icio.us : delicious, flickr, google, amazon, search, my web, tagging, yahoo

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.

Technorati : commodity, cycle, hype, tagging, tags, web2.0
Del.icio.us : commodity, cycle, hype, tagging, tags, web2.0

Tag-cloud my OPML

Both tagging and RSS aim to help us cope with the information overload.

Tagging means that we no longer have to decide for each and every bookmark in which folder it should be filed.

RSS means that we don't have to go our favorite information source to check what's new; instead the information is aggregated and delivered as a notification to us.

Unfortunately, most RSS readers file the RSS feeds in... guess what. Yup, folders :)

Back to square one, only now instead of having to file hundreds of bookmarks, we're filing hundreds of RSS feeds.

Can we please have tagging in OPML? I'd really like to be able to specify the tags for the feed I am subscribing to, and have the RSS reader allow me to navigate my OPML using a tag cloud.

Mashing up the OPML tag cloud and the RSS items tags, together with an indication of the number of new posts, into a single visual display, would be even more powerful, as it'd allow me to quickly identify the hot topics in the feeds I am subscribed to.

BTW, RSS supports tagging directly (through the category element), but it doesn't seem to be widely supported.

Technorati : opml, rant, rss, tag, tag cloud, tagging, web2.0

Del.icio.us : opml, rant, rss, tag, tag cloud, tagging, web2.0

Tagging Whmpfff

The Freesound Project is back online, after several days of downtime due to being slashdoted :)

Freesound is about sharing tagged sound samples, all available under the Create Commons Sampling Plus license.

More than 10,000 sound samples already shared and tagged (some are also geotagged). Pretty cool.

Not much more left to tag in the world :) (yes, I know I will be proven wrong)

Technorati : CC, create commons, freesound, geotag, music, sound, tag, tagging, web2.0
Del.icio.us : CC, create commons, freesound, geotag, music, sound, tag, tagging, web2.0

Wink

Wink, launched almost two months ago and now accepting beta users, is interesting.

Half delicious-like social bookmarking (with tagging, duh.), half-Wiki, with a bit of Outfoxed

The Wink user scenario begins pretty much like a search engine - a small text box, with a "Search" button next to it. Enter a search term, click Search.

You will get two sets of search results - first, links which were already tagged and rated by Wink users (ordered using Wink's TagRank), and second, standard Google search results. For each link in either of these two sets, you can add the link to your favorites, tag it, rate it or mark it as spam.

In addition, you can view the Wiki entry related to your search term, edit it if needed or create a new one if one doesn't exist already. Plus, you get a list of related search terms.

Other features - the ability to aggregate links into collections, and to subscribe to other users' collections.

Pretty cool. A potentially smooth integration between the search, bookmarking, tagging and content creation processes.

However, since it's going to be uphill battle getting us to switch from typing Google whenever we think "search for pages", they might be better off packing all this wonderful functionality into a browser plugin, Outfoxed-style (or integrate with Flock).

Technorati : delicious, flock, outfoxed, rank, search, spam, tag, tagging, web 2.0, wiki, wink
Del.icio.us : delicious, flock, outfoxed, rank, search, spam, tag, tagging, web 2.0, wiki, wink

Openomy.com - online tagged file system

Ian Sefferman introduced Openomy. It's a brave attempt to start from the bottom up - a web file system based on tagging (no folders. nada. nothing. just tags.), RSS (notes on implementation), completely open APIs, and infrastructure for building applications on top of this.

Everything is still rudimentary - basic functionality, minimal user interface.

Pretty exciting, but the real test of course would be existence of applications leveraging it.

(From Tagrio)

Technorati : IanSefferman, Openomy, api, file system, rss, tag, tagging, web2.0
Del.icio.us : IanSefferman, Openomy, api, file system, rss, tag, tagging, web2.0

Amazon is tagging too

It's not clear exactly when did this happen, but Amazon is gradually introducing tags into its service. See Techcrunch for details. I just hope they didn't patent it :)

I love Amazon's recommendation engine, and tagging certainly has the potential to make it even better.

I was just thinking, that in order for users to come up with unorthodox usages for tags (a-la Flickr's deleteme), there has to be some sort of bulletin board in the service. Without it, new tagging conventions would be much slower to emerge.

Technorati : amazon, applitag, deleteme, tag, tagging
Del.icio.us : amazon, applitag, deleteme, tag, tagging

The Flickrization of Yahoo

Erick Schonfeld wrote in Business 2.0 about the effects of the Flickr purchase on the Yahoo culture, and Yahoo's approach to Social Media and amateur-created content. An interesting read.

"Yahoo has done the best job of the large guys of getting the concept," says tech guru Esther Dyson, who was an early investor in Flickr.

I agree :)

On the other hand, the article presents some facts regarding the success of Yahoo's home-grown social bookmarks service:

In practice, however, tagging search results and bookmarks may still be too geeky an activity for Yahoo's average Joe. Thus far, My Web has seen tepid growth in the number of pages saved (about 300,000) and tags applied (fewer than 90,000). That might not seem bad for a product still in beta, but My Web is seeing little month-to-month growth. (Del.icio.us, by contrast, has 10 million saved pages and half a million tags.)

Why are mainstream users slow to adapt tagging? Is it because it is inherently attractive only for a small segment, or is it just a matter of time before one of the competing social bookmarking services will get the ingredients + the secret sauce of the tagging user experience right?

Technorati : ErickSchonfeld, EstherDyson, delicious, flickr, mainstream, my web, social media, tagging, yahoo
Del.icio.us : ErickSchonfeld, EstherDyson, delicious, flickr, mainstream, my web, social media, tagging, yahoo

Oh, baby, baby it's a TagWorld

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch reported on TagWorld - a new uber-tagging service. Their vision, from the About page:

build the Social Web by providing a unified set of easy-to-use, web-based services that will let users create and engage in a more meaningful, social experience

Also:

TagWorld sees five fundamental components for building out this new social web infrastructure: people, photos, blogs, tags and storage.

They do a pretty good job at providing an integrated, do-it-all experience, with a slick(er) user interface. The free-form tagging interface is still somewhat lacking to my taste. They have a cool tag-by-selecting-from-a-tag-cloud user interface in some of the areas. Bookmarks, like pretty much everything else, can be tagged as public or private.

The search experience is real pleasure though. A slidebar for indicating the number of results you'd like to see at once. Thumbnails of the web sites in your bookmarks.

The service has a strong "mass consumer" flavor to it. Also, it seems to be one of the only Web 2.0 services developed using .NET technology, and not LAMP. No, I'm not hinting at a connection between the two facts. Almost not all :)

Technorati : MichaelArrington, blog, bookmark, delicious, flickr, search, social, tag, tagging, tagworld, user interface, web2.0
Del.icio.us : MichaelArrington, blog, bookmark, delicious, flickr, search, social, tag, tagging, tagworld, user interface, web2.0

Standartizing Tag Semantics

striatic has been leading for several months a brave attempt on the Flickr discussion board to standardize the usage of certain tags.

Several similar discussions went on in the del.icio.us discussion list. Suggestions for a wiki-like solution to organize such an effort keep coming up.

There are some things that tagging systems could do to reduce the effort associated with this, without losing the value of free-form, tag-with-whatever-comes-to-mind tagging.

Some of them can be done in the backend, when searching for tags (like stemming). However, there are probably more things that such systems can do to encourage users to choose the more standard tags.

For example, using the same logic used by the Flickr clustering algorithm, when a user tags an item with "SF", the system could - after letting me use the SF tag - make a suggestion:

The "SF" tag often stands for "San Francisco". The "SF" tag was used 36,717 times, while the "San Francisco" tag was used 214,347 times. Would you like to add the "San Francisco" tag as well?

As more and more users join the tagging circles, thought should be given to the scalability of the model - it is in everyone's best interest to reduce the number of tags in the tag space. Well. Except maybe for Oracle and MySQL :)

Technorati : delicious, flickr, semantic, standard, striatic, tag, tagging
Del.icio.us : delicious, flickr, semantic, standard, striatic, tag, tagging

Big.Blue.Licious

David Weinberger live-blogged a rather amusing recount of an IBM press event, "The Future of Social Networks" held in the IBM office in Cambridge.

Turns out that IBM did their own application wiki thingie (JotSpot-like), and also - behold - DogEar, an internal social bookmarking service.

My favorite quote:

"Irene: It's all Web 2.0 stuff." :)

An interesting read, especially given the live-blogging effect (less-filtered opinions).

Technorati : DavidWeinberger, DogEar, IBM, JotSpot, app, appliki, delicious, folksonomy, tag, tagging, wiki
Del.icio.us : DavidWeinberger, DogEar, IBM, JotSpot, app, appliki, delicious, folksonomy, tag, tagging, wiki

tagstd:recap <tagstd:recap>

I've had some interesting comments from several folks regarding the tagging standard ( & follow up) I've proposed a few days ago - thank you! I'd like to try to address some of them here.

• On a general note, I'd like to note that the list of predefined values for the rel attribute is defined in the HTML4 specification. Obviously it does not include "tag" as predefined value.
  The specification however explicitly permits defining new values for the rel attribute (though it recommends that in this case the conventions used will be cited in the profile attribute of the head element).
  So, technically speaking, using rel="tag" is OK from HTML point of view. But, putting aside the spec, why take the risk of using a non-universally-accepted value when we don't have to? I don't really see why "
  <a tagstd:rel="tag" href=..."
  is significantly more usable then
  "<a rel="tag" href=... "
  and that would already be a big improvement in the robustness of RelTag.

Kevin Marks (from Technorati, and who is credited with the concept of Rel-Tag) raised some great points:

Mixing data and representation is by design. If the tags are embedded in the content they don't get detached (link)

I agree, this is a worthy cause. But, there are several different options for embedding the tag in the contents, and some of them provide the ability to embed the tag in the content without mixing data and representation. For example, using
<span tagstd:tags="tag1 tag2 tag3">content here</span>
would get the job done just as well. (though using span has other drawbacks though).

Redundancy is not a problem in practice (I have 18 million examples). (link)

While it's hard to argue with 18 million examples :), it'd be interesting to know - does the Technorati crawler verifies a match between the tag as indicated by the URL postfix and the tag as indicated by the link text?

When you do cut-and-paste, you get cut-and-paste errors, that's one of life's most basic truths, second only to "if you use 1.0, it will crash".

Usability: straw man argument here. Bloggers know how to make links. Adding rel="tag" is very easy to remember. In any case, if a tool is generating it this is moot. XML is no more robust. (link)

Hmpff. I beg to differ. Bloggers != HTML coders.

For people who click "new post", write their thoughts, and then click "Post", the rel="tag" is not only not easy to remember, it's also.. well. They pretty much have no idea what we're talking about :)

Now this of course could be solved by tools. But, if we rely on a tool, why don't we choose a format that assumes a tool (though it can still be added manually).

I am not sure why you're saying that XML is not more robust. XML can be validated against a schema, assuring 100% match between the expected syntax and the actual syntax. And even if a schema is not used, the mere fact that XML supports namespaces solves a lot of problems. Even just defining your own tagstd:rel attribute instead of using the HTML standard rel attribute would be a huge improvement in robustness IMO.

Tag Spaces: these are there for disambiguation, and to provide alternatives. You should pick an appropriate one for each tag, bearing in mind that it should make sense to your readers if clicked on. See your own complaint of redundancy supra. (link)

I am not clear on this point, disambiguation of what? and alternatives to what?

Let's keep in mind that the whole tagging thing is about a flat namespace, in which all tags start as equals. That's the beauty of tagging. And, when we do want to disambiguate them, I doubt it will be done by URLs.

Let's admit it, everyone reading this blog is probably an early adopter to some extent. Let's try to imagine what will the tagging world look like when the dust settles down a bit. I'd guess we'll have 3-4 "tag collections" web sites, with direct tagging and tag-lookup support integrated into the browsers, and lots of non-technical people using this.

I'd guess that for them, the right thing to do is that when you'd like to look up a tag (e.g. find all "things of type X" associated with this tag), they'd want that it would be them who decides - at "run time" - which repository to use to look up the tag, not the one determined by the author.

Scope: this is deliberately left unspecified in the rel="tag" definition.

Just wondering, what is the issue that not defining scope was meant to avoid? Also, as pointed out by Kevin, while the Rel-Tag spec avoid this, the other microformats use facilities such as the class attributeto define the scope. Again, according to the specs, this is ok. But there are practical questions to ask... what would prevent a CSS developer from defining a CSS class "tag" and using it? How would the tools and the browser resolve the conflict? and the biggest question... why not reduce the chances of a conflict from happening at the spec level. A very simple solution would be to use class="tagstd:tag".

Also, it should be noted that the input from Priyantha, from Zoundry, which is the tool I'm using the write this post, express confidence in the Rel-Tag (and the other microformats). Also, Hendrik responded to Eran's comments indicating that in his opinion, a tagging standard should not assume any changes in the (X)HTML specs, and should in fact be independent from HTML.

Technorati : KevinMarks, Technorati, Zoundry, blogger, folksonomy, html, relTag, specification, standard, tag, tagging, tagstd.org, technorati, web2.0, xml
Del.icio.us : KevinMarks, Technorati, Zoundry, blogger, folksonomy, html, relTag, specification, standard, tag, tagging, tagstd.org, technorati, web2.0, xml

More on a tagging standard

More on a tagging standard.

Rel-Tag (a.k.a relTag) is a de-facto standard for tagging a specific page. Rel-Tag was defined by Tantek Çelik, following a concept from Derek Powazek and Kevin Marks. It is part of a larger collection of microformats - a wonderfully practical approach to building a practical semantic web.

To tag your page with a Rel-Tag, you just include a link and use the attribute rel="tag" on the link:

<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/sample" rel="tag">sample</a>

It doesn't matter what page the URL points to, as long as it ends with the tag name.

Incredibly simple. Paste this piece of HTML into your page, and your page is tagged, and indexed as such by services that support this convention, such as Technorati.

I do share Kevin Burton's feeling though, that the Rel-Tag specification is somewhat lacking (or, as Kevin defined it, under-specified).

Points to consider:

• Mixing Data and Representation
• • relTags are easy to create by hand (at least, assuming that you know HTML). They're even easier to generate by an application that supports them (such as Zoundry). But once generated, relTags are not just metadata, they're actually part of your content. So it becomes very hard to build a tool that edits them. You might have used these links in your content. You might have moved them around. You might want to change the link text but keep the tag. It becomes messy. Last time checked the problem of separating data from representation in a practical, widely supported manner was already solved.
• Redundancy
• • The tag is repeated twice, once in the URL and once in the text. Wanna bet how quickly these two get out of sync?
• Usability
• • relTags are very easy to use, if you know how to access and edit your HTML. But, if you know that, there isn't much difference between editing a "<a href" tag to add the rel="tag", and between cutting and pasting a piece of XML to achieve the same goal. And if you don't know HTML, both are equally inaccessible. So, end-user usability being pretty much the same, why not choose a more robust solution?
• Tag Spaces
• • According to relTag, the actual URL you use point to any page, as long as that page is a "tag space", loosely defined as "a place that collates or defines tags". The spec goes on to inst that tag spaces can be used to provide a specific meaning to the tag. What does this mean? Is it a method to tag tags? A categorization system? A meaningless technical detail? These questions are too big to be left unspecified. The obscurity of this is leading to people (e.g. me :) repeating the tags multiple times, for each one of their favorite "tag spaces" (and to some cool gizmos).
• Scope definition
• • relTags are used to tag the text that includes them. They do not carry with them a scope definition, so it would be hard for tools (or people as a matter of fact) to understand if these tags refer to the entire page, or to a specific section in the page (or post in a blog).

It'd be great if a more general and robust tagging standard would support relTags for backward compatibility.

I've been playing with the tagging format I've suggested in a previous post, and found some changes that should be applied to it in order to make it more useful. But this post is already getting way too long, so more on that later :)

Technorati : KevinBurton, Rel-Tag, Tantek, Technorati, Zoundry, folksonomy, microformats, relTag, semantic web, standard, tag, tagging, standard, specification
Del.icio.us : KevinBurton, Rel-Tag, Tantek, Technorati, Zoundry, folksonomy, microformats, relTag, semantic web, standard, tag, tagging, standard, specification

The Perfect Tagging UI

Enough whining. I'm going to try to be constructive by listing what are the behaviors that will make me fall in love with a tagging thingie:

1. Clearly mark the tag boundaries
   
   • Why? we still have a mess with different conventions regarding what separates tags - spaces, commas, semicolon, ... until we figure out it, we need a way to provide a visual hint to the user whether they got it right or wrong.
   • Reasonable: Flock. Tags are comma-separated; whenever you type the comma, the previous tag is visually surrounded by a gray bubble indicating that it's a "single unit".
     
   • Bad but not awful: Flickr. You can't tell as you type the tags if you got it right or wrong, but when you click the "Add" button, you get immediate visual feedback by inspecting the tags list above the entry line.
   • Terrible: Zoundry (which other then this is a pretty cool product, I am using it to write this post :). You won't know if you did it right or wrong until you see your post
     on the blog...


2. Support copy and paste of tags
   
   • there, and paste them here. Using a standard copy-and-paste interface, mind you.
   • list, but selecting the tags in the list is hard, and pasting them results in a mess.
   • Good: delicious.


3. Auto-complete
   
   • Why? I love tagging, they make life easier. I don't like typing, it makes life shorter.
   • Reasonable: blinklist.
   • Bad: RawSugar. The auto-suggest does not follow well with the typing process. I can't press enter to choose the currently selected auto-complete suggestion and then proceed to type the next tag. I am forced to leave my typing context to select the tag, and after it's selected, to use the mouse to move back to where I was in the tagging line.
     
   
   
4. Auto-suggest
   
   • Why? I'm not always in the mood to generate tags. Sometimes I am feeling lazy. Comeon, you know so much about me and about other users, use it to make my life easier, not just the search engine life :)
     
     • Based on tags that I've often used together with the tags I've already typed
     • Based on tags that other users often use together with the tags I've already typed
     • Based on tags that other people who tagged this page used
       
   • Good: delicious
   • Bad: Flickr


5. No hierarchy, classification, or anything else that disrupts the cognitive process
   
   • Why? Because I find it distracting. And I have a good excuse for this :)
   • Good: Flickr
   • Bad: RawSugar
     


6. Ability to edit tags like text
   
   • Why? because I make typos and change my mind, and I want to be able to quickly go back during the tagging process (or later) and fix it
     
   • Good: Flickr, Delicious. Though none of them makes it too easy to edit the tags once they are submitted.
     
   • Bad: Flock. The visual bubble around the tags, which I mention in #1, really gets in the way when you see a typo in a tag you just typed and you want to fix it.
     


7. Search previously tagged items with an already-typed tag without disrupting the tagging process
   
   • Why? Because I'd like to borrow the tags I used when I tagged related items in the past
   • Good: Flickr. Modless tagging interface, I can always open a new window and search.
   • Bad: Flock (modal dialog...), Microsoft Live Favorites.
     

Funny, if you scan the "Bad:" examples, you'll note that the application that I am pretty much addicted to - Flickr - scores pretty high on the Bad list. Which kinda puts my rumbling in perspective :)

Technorati : Zoundry, delicious,favorites, flickr, flock,folksonomy, microsoft live,rawsugar, tag,tagging, web2.0
Del.icio.us : Zoundry, delicious,favorites, flickr, flock,folksonomy, microsoft live, rawsugar,tag, tagging, web2.0

Looksmart leveraging Furl to create vertical search

Looksmart launched yesterday 161 new vertical web sites in 12 categories, apparently leveraging their Sep' 04 acquisition of Furl by using Furl users tagged bookmarks to discover and rank web pages relevant for a specific category / vertical.

I believe that they are the first major search engine company that truly leverages the tagging phenomena and integrates it with conventional search engine to deliver general purpose better search for the non-tagging public.

Technorati : better search, folksonomy, furl, looksmart, search, search engine, tag, tagging, tags, web2.0
Del.icio.us : better search, folksonomy, furl, looksmart, search, search engine, tag, tagging, tags, web2.0

MS Live Favorites - almost, but not quite.

Windows Live Favorites is one of the many services introduced as part of the recently-announced Microsoft Windows Live suite (MS's new AJAX-based virtual desktop).

It's got rudimentary tagging support (called keywords. unlike Google, which calls them labels. well. it's always good to have a topic for flame wars...). Tag, search by tag. No tag cloud support. Tag bundle? Huh?

You can share your tagged favorites with the world. Hmm... that's a much as there is there in that area right now. No real community features there right now - can't see who else used this tag (I mean, keyword :), how many did that, what else did they tag with related tags, etc.

The tagging user interface is... hmmm... minimalistic :)

You can import your existing favorites from your browser (as long as its Internet Explorer, at least at this point). Nothing there about my favorite feature - synchronization between the desktop browser favorites and the online copy - but the entire desktop / live synchronization thing is supposed to be coming later. Instead, it got an "export to bookmarks.htm" feature, with a distinctive '96 smell.

No real leverage of tags across the entire suite. I can't search the entire suite - favorites, email, files, ...- using my tags.

No information yet about the APIs that this service will expose.

Looks like the giant is waking up, but it doesn't feel like they really dig what this is all about. But then, that was also the case with Internet Explorer 1.0 :)

And until it does, no real reason to switch away from your current favorite social bookmark thingie.

Technorati : ajax, browser, desktop, folksonomy, integration, live, microsoft, tagging, tags, web2.0, windows live
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