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

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
Del.icio.us : ajax, browser, desktop, folksonomy, integration, live, microsoft, tagging, tags, web2.0, windows live

The scariest interface contest

Don't miss this wonderful contest on OK/CANCEL:

This week we'’re taking entries for the scariest interface youÂ’ve ever used. Leave a comment and a screenshot link. Feel free to show stuff that frightens you because of how it looks, works, or what it does. Then we'll '“interface your fears'” (har har) by talking about how to improve ‘em.

The person who has the scariest interface, or comes up with the best fix wins something cool.

Some pretty good (scary) stuff on there.

How's about we do the same, leave a comment with a link to the tag-a-whatever web site (you can select from the ones listed in tag-o-verse 2.0 or come up with your own) with the most confusing and frustrating interface.

This might actually turn out to be a somewhat useful exercise...

What will you win? Don't know. Maybe a golden tag.

Tags: tags tagging folksonomy web2.0 ui userinterface contest worst

Post activation analysis paralysis

Scott Golder wrote (together with Bernardo A. Huberman) a while back a paper on "The Structure of Collaborative Tagging Systems" (which I mentioned a while back).

Scott published his notes from Rashmi Sinha's session at TagCamp 2005 a few days ago. Rashmi Sinha, from Uzanto Consulting, posted about a month ago a wonderful piece on "A cognitive analysis of tagging". It's a must read.

Her main point is that the tagging process is so much more easy and natural then the classification process (e.g. organizing URLs or Pictures or whatever into hierarchies or folders based on a predefined categories), because it avoids what she calls "post-activation analysis paralysis":

"post activation analysis paralysis": A state of fear that you will make the wrong decision. And the item will be lost forever - it will land in some deep well, some hard to access branch of the tree and disappear from your view and attention.

Her analysis makes a lot of sense. If this is true, I think it's a good argument in favor of keeping the tagging process as simple as possible, and not to encumber it with facets, hierarchical tagging or anything else that makes that will pause that sub-conscious stream of tags from flowing. Hopefully we can avoid over-engineering the tagging process for a while, focusing instead on perfecting (and standardizing) the usability of the core tagging process.


Tags: tags tagging folksonomy web2.0 delicious search cognitive RashmiSinha hierarchy
facet classification

about del.icio.us

Michael Arrington summarized the new del.icio.us features in "Wow! Del.icio.us rolls out more stuff" on TechCrunch .

The Del.icio.us Search Engine, now available to non-delicious users as well, puts delicious on par with Furl (a Looksmart company), Wink, and others who are leveraging tagging to create a better general purpose search engine.

Does anyone know if Google are already leveraging tags from the various tagging services directly in their PageRank algorithm?

David Weinberger posted an interesting summary of two sessions that Joshua Schachter of del.icio.us gave at the Berkman Center @ Harvard a few days ago. I find the summary of the first session particularly interesting:

Currently at delicious: 5M links, about 10M posts, on average about two tags per item. About 500,000 unique tags. Growth in tags is slow.

500,000 unique tags... that's a good number to take into account when designing tagging systems or application that leverage information from tagging services.

My personal favorite:

Q: Why "tags" instead of "keywords" in coming up with the terminology?

A: It was inadvertently clever. I wish I could say I did it intentionally. Typically, when keywords are used, you don't see a list of the aggregated keywords. Maybe it is a slightly new thing.

... and so the revolution has begun, with tags, tag clouds, tag bundles, meta-tags, taggers, ... and has turned the tag "tagging" into one of the most used tags :)

Oh yeah. Joshua also got hold of delicious.com. So maybe people will actually be able to find delicious :)

Tags: tags tagging folksonomy web2.0 delicious search MichaelArrington DavidWeinberger

Social social tagging site tagging

Here is a much better way to maintain an up-to-date Tag-o-verse.

Supr.c.ilio.us - the best thing since tagged bread.

It's a "social social tagging site tagging". site :)

From their About page:

With so many places to tag so many things, how could one person keep track of it all?

Which just proves the old proverb - build a better mouse trap, and someone will build a meta-mouse.

Tags: tags tagging folksonomy web2.0 humor meta

Tag-o-verse 2.0

Time to update my more-than-a-month-old (*gasp*) Tag-o-verse list, with some new entries and with more accurate classification.

Bookmarks

• Del.icio.us
  
• Furl
  
• Feeed
  
• RawSugar
  
• Shadows
  
• Yahoo! My Web 2.0
  
• Blinklist
  
• Wink
  
• Flock (desktop tagging; online tagging through integration with other social bookmarking services. more...
  
• Getoutfoxed

Web Clips

• clipmarks
  

Feeds

• Technorati
  
• Feedmarker
  
• Rojo
  
• Google Reader
  

Notes

• TagFacts
  

Academic Papers:

• CiteULike

Colors

• Colr.org

Consumer Products

• all consuming

Games

• Millions of Games (MOG)

Goals

• 43 things

Places

• 43 places
  
• Foundcity
  
• Tagzania
  

Poeple

• taglag

Pictures

• Flickr
  
• Buzznet
  
• Photobucket
  

Video

• vimeo
  

Others

• Ning
  
Create your own social application; lots of long tail-type tagging applications.


• Where are you
  Generates a neighbourhood-specific tag, which you use to tag stuff related to this neighbourhood in delcious, flickr, etc.


• Google Base
  Mega-tag-everything thingie. more...

Hmpff.

Tags: tags tagging folksonomy web2.0