Tagging - The Least You Need to Know
February 1, 2007 by Marcus
A new report from Pew/Internet says that the practice of "tagging" is now used by 28% of Internet users. Though the terminology used by the questions has (rightfully) led some to question the results, the numbers aren’t really that important. Tagging works for Internet users and the reason is pretty simple (emphasis added):
Q: Why do you think Internet users are drawn to tagging?
Weinberger: It’s really useful. Compare your traditional computer system to organize your digital
photos to using a tagging system. Instead of having to stick a photo into a single folder — say,
“trips 2006” — you can easily tag it as “Italy,” “anniversary,” “sunset,” “mountains,” and “no kids.”
You can assemble instant virtual albums of all your anniversary photos, or all your photos of all
your trips to Italy, etc.
Marcus, although I share your enthusiasm for tagging, I would be careful about saying (without equivocation) “Tagging works for Internet users”.
Although the early results seem really promising, I hope we don’t oversell the merits of tagging as so many have oversold the merits of taxonomies.
Hi Joshua,
Thanks for your comment… While I do believe - without equivocation - that tagging works for users (read: MY tags help ME), I’m merely optimistic that the aggregation of tags will benefit Internet users en masse (OTHERS’ tags help ME). Time will tell on that one. Your comparison to the merits of taxonomies is a great one.