Tag, Tags, Tagging Are Buzz Words Associated with Web 2.0, Sometimes Called the Read/Write

Tag… We’re it!

Tag, tags, tagging are buzz words associated with Web 2.0, sometimes called the Read/Write Web. Web 2.0 applications like blogs, wikis, podcasts, shared bookmarking,collaborative applications, and free range social networks encourage users to be authors. Web 2.0 applications make it easy to not only read digital information but to author, share and classify that information.

One revolutionary aspect of easy access to digital authorship is the ability for a community of interest to tag information in a non-hierarchical manner.Tags, also known as folksonomies, are user designated keywords that describe the content in a way that makes sense to other users in social network environments.Users can add multiple tags to any community content they deem interesting and edit their own tags to adopt the tags generated by the group. By searching tags, users can quickly locate and communicate with like minded community members. This leads to a swarm of keyword language that can be dynamically collected, analyzed and displayed by the Web 2.0 application.

Tag activity is often displayed using a weighted list technique called a tag-cloud. Tag clouds graphically represent the most active tags currently found in the most popular content of a site. Larger and darker fonts are used to indicate popularity. The tags are also hotlinks that trigger a search of the most current information on the site. Instead of crafting a query (or just thinking of good keywords) users click on a tag. The more popular the tag, the larger and darker the word will appear within the cloud of tags presented by the site. This interactive display changes as the attention of the group jumps from topic to topic. Viewing a tag-cloud is like hovering over the community buzz. Click a tag and you search for themost active blogs, wikis, discussion forums, news stories, photos, songs, videos or other content being created, shared and tagged by the community.

Tags deliver an intuitive and common sense description of content. They give power to users interested enough to read, create, or tag content. A reader/writer in the Web 2.0 environment is encouraged to apply multiple tags to their own content, along with the content of others. This lets participants the user build a searchable personal system of organization that is easily shared with the larger community. The host site leverages this taggingto create a tag-cloud showing electronic pulse of the group.

Tags have built in weaknesses and vulnerabilities. If spammers can freely add irrelevant tags just to attract attention, communities suffer. Tags are limited to single words and a single keyword is a weak tool. This means tag searching “board’ might get you surf, skate, snow, lumber, school or corporate associations. You have to add multiple tags to describe content, which can lead to sloppy soup of tags that soon scroll off the screen. Once you develop a large tag collection you begin to long for more formal organizational structures like subject indexes or the good old Dewey Decimal System. You’ll have to spend time grouping, alphabetizing and combining and editing your tags. , but it’s more likely you’ll just remain lost in the clouds.

Additionally, the quality of tagged information depends on the quality of the community. Will a Flickr based surf club swapping pictures of big waves on Maui have better information than the National Oceanographic Institute? (I suppose the answer depends on what you want to know: Is the surf is up or a tsunami is coming?)

Don’t let the weaknesses of tags & tag-clouds keep you from using this technology.Try harnessing the novelty and fun to create your own community of interest and extend the reach of your classroom and our ideas. If you have a website, you can tweak tag-clouds to help you suggest keywords that point your students toward the resources you want them to see. Tag-cloud metaphors are a great springboard for whole class keyword brainstorming before a research project. Who knows, you may even be able to spot a trend by skimming the Tag-Clouds. It is best to think of tags as just one more channel of information, a fun supplement to the traditional search engine based approach.

Web 2.0 Tools you can use in your classroom:

Eurekster: You don’t need your own website to use this innovate search service. You can set up our own personalized search engine using a free Eurekster account. You set the initial keywords for your own tag cloud. You also specify the websites you wish to focus upon. This helps you quickly build a curriculum based information resource. Additionally, Eurekster will track queries and keywords for you and send you a digest of tags you can then emphasize in your tag cloud.

YahooSearch: pull from blog.

Logo Generator (Fun)

Indeed as we’ll see below, popular search engines are jumping on the Web 2.0 ‘tagwagon’ by including tag searching options in their new services.

Will tag-clouds replace queries and keywords as a search method?

Unlikely… but then… Tag-clouds are interesting to look at and fun to play with. But once the novelty wears off, it’s apparent that tagging and tag-clouds aren’t the best way to find reliable information.

, not search indexing spyders determine how to classify materials. At it’s worse, detractors say tagging opens the door to self proclaimed connections that might become highways for spam.

Clouds of tags are a popular feature on many Web 2.0 sites. On many sites, users tag information as a way of sharing resources. Users search for tags or are presented popular ‘highly tagged’ listings that create a new way of finding information. This creates a social network of interests that helps build Web 2.0 community. This is free range organization for the chaos of the Internet based on the wisdom of the ‘mob’. Instead of crafting a query (or just thinking of good keywords) users click on a tag. Essentially, the more users who’ve used a tag, the larger the word will be within the cloud of tags presented by the site.

For now Tag-Clouds are a way for a web based community to display and share current areas of interest. Interested human participants in an interdependent community are likely to provide relevant and up to the minute resources you might miss if you just use a search engine when seeking information.

By Daniel Terdiman
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
November 16, 20054:00 AM PT

Tags, meanwhile, are the searchable keywords the individuals can assign to either their own images or to those of nearly anyone else that say something about the information--the defining characteristic of Flickr and a growing number of other online services

“Also known as "folksonomies," tagging systems are usually created by users themselves, rather than site owners, and make many online services far more accessible and useful than they had ever been before. The practice brings a social context to such resources as blogs, shared bookmarking, photography and even books.”

©Laura Blalock, MSIS (Technorati)
Electronic Services and Reference Librarian
Angelo and Jennette Volpe Library and Media Center
Tennessee Technological University

“We can keep both subject headings and add tags. Like keyword searching they can be used for casual information seeking. But if that doesn’t work or a more in-depth search is needed, the precision of subject headings will still be there. So I’m probably the last one to figure this out. So now I’m headed over to John Blyberg’s to see what he has on tag clouds for the catalog”

“Lately I’ve been thinking about one particular artifact of the folksonomy phenomenon — the folksonomy menu that serves as a sort of buzz index providing users with a quick visualization of the most popular tags (technically I think it’s called a weighted list). Popular tags are displayed in a larger font and it’s relatively easy to identify hot topics at a glance. This visual representation of the popularity of any given tag is undeniably cool. However, once the coolness factor wears off it becomes fairly obvious that these menus are also not very accessible.”

Homemade metatags

Homebrew tags

Personal organization with a reacc

Wisdom of Clouds: can a hive-mind predict, elevate etc.

“There are some limitations to folksonomies. First, they can't distinguish between two meanings of a single word. The band The Big Boys' singer's name was Biscuit, which is not distinguishable as a tag from the doughy kind of biscuit that you eat.

Second, some people will tag their band with "band" and others with "bands," forcing you to have to search through two tags to get the full results. “

‘They let you effortlessly navigate the information alphabetically or by importance. Each tag's level of popularity/importance is represented by font size.”