Tagging is a flexible and easy organizational system.

Tagging has two aspects: a personal and a social aspect:

PERSONAL: We use tagging for our own benefit. It is a way of organizing information we are interested in. We tag an article, image, blog or website because we want to find it easily again.
SOCIAL: For many people, tagging is for sharing their own information and watchng others because web browsing can be a solitary experience since computers are indicidualistic devices.
When we are in front of the PC and come across some information we want to remember, we tag it. By doing this, we jump from sailing the web alone to joining a group of others.
This transition is important because we are transported to a crowd of people with whom we have somthing in common and we can enjoy their presence but do not need to converse.
We can compare the situation with the pleassure of working or reading the newspaper in a café - we enjoy the presence of others without the burden of active interaction. Thus tagging creates ad-hoc groups.

Pshychologists pointed out 4 principles that can lead to "wisdom of crowds" which seem relevant for tagging systems. These principles are:

1. Diversity of opinion.
2. Independence of .members from one another
3. Decentralization.
4. A good method for aggregating opinions.

Drawback:

An item will have one or more tags asssociated with it. There is no information about the meaning or semantics of a tag. For example, the tag "apple" might refer to:

• the fruit,
• Apple Indorporated,
• the Beatle's music label, etc.

This lack of semantic distinction in tags leads to inappropriate connections between items. Additionaly , the selection of tags is highly individualistic. Different people use different terms to describe the same concept.

Suggested and related readings:
1) Why social bookmark?
http://3spots.blogspot.com/2006/04/why-social-bookmark.html
2) A Social Analysis of Tagging
http://www.rashmisinha.com/archives/06_01/social-tagging.html
3)A cognitive Analysis of Tagging
http://www.rashmisinha.com/archives/05_09/tagging-cognitive.html
4) In Wikipedia:
[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TagsSuggested|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tags]] Suggested
5)"The Term Tagging"
http://blog.thinkphp.de/archives/124-An-alternative-Approach-to-Tagging.html
6) Social Bookmarking Tools (I) A General Review
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april05/hammond/04hammond.html
7)Blog by an Argentinian colleague
http://eltnotes.blogspot.com/

Back to OUR WORK