Tagging as we know it started with link tagging, followed by photo
tagging, and quickly took off. Since then, the world has been going
crazy and drooling over tagging, folksonomies, and social software and
services.
Some thought or still seem to think that you can just slap tags to any
type of information and any type of software, and all of a sudden they
would become oh so much better. Thus, we now have dating services
with tags, video with tags, audio with tags, and so on. Some of these
services are a success, and their use of tags makes them more useful.
Tags are indeed a nice "innovation" - they lend themselves to easy
input, easy (re)organization, they (can) improve information discovery
and navigation, can be employed as filters and thus help with
information overload (note how this conflicts somewhat with
information discovery aspect of tags).
However, tags are not a panacea! Just because you can make
something taggable, it does not automatically mean it makes sense to
do so, and it does not magically increase its usefulness.
Take, for instance, Tagzania,
described on the site as "Tagzania is about tags and places. If you
register and log in, you can add places, points, to create and
document your maps. When you add a point, you may tag it with
keywords. That way, Tagzania is not only a place to build and keep
your own maps, shared territories are created as well.". The
service was started in July 2005 and people blogged about it like
mad! But where is Tagzania now, a month after its launch?
According to Alexa, it's nowhere.
How come? Tagging places makes sense, doesn't it? Hm, does it? For
whom? Yourself or others? Remember, while tags are simple and easily
applied, they still require time and effort. Most people are selfish
(I try to be realistic). Now ask yourself:
How often do I need to tag a place I know?
How often in my daily life do I encounter a new place? For most of
us, the answer will be not often.
How often then will I go to Tagzania to tag a new place?
Rarely.
If I don't use Tagzania very often, will I remember to visit it when I
visit a new place? No, not me.
If you know of only a few dozen places, do you really need to tag
them? I don't. I can remember them all and can look them up by
name.
When considering adding tagging to your service or application, ask
yourself some of the above questions. Tags don't always make sense.
I've always
disliked hierarchies as a navigation mechanism for large information corpora. When I first started to write software that powers
Simpy, back in 2002, I asked myself some of these questions and came up with answers that had "tagging" written all over them, and judging from Simpy users' feedback, they've worked out very well!
