Tom Coates does some analysis to illustrate what he suggests is a cultural difference in how people use tags. Some use tags as folders to house objects, others use them as descriptions of objects. (And, it seems to me, many of us do both.) His example: If you tag an URL as “blogs,” you are collecting blogs into a virtual folder. If you tag an URL “blog,” you are describing it as an example of a blog. In the first case, you’re probably putting blogs aside so you can read them. In the second, you may be researching the blog phenomenon. Tom’s research leads him to conjecture that “the folder metaphor is losing ground and the keyword one is currently assuming dominance.”

I assume this is correlated to blogging for myself and blogging to add to the social tagstream. I tend to folder for myself and to keyword when contributing to a social tagstream

(And now for a really messy example. Since I sometimes write about the blogging phenomenon, my blog site uses a category (= tag) called “blogs.” But because I know that many many many people at del.icio.us use the tag “blogs” as a way of foldering blogs, I use “blogging” when technorati-tagging posts about blogging. Since I use “blogs” as a keyword, I am a counter-example to Tom’s post.)

It’s all very confusing. Fortunately, Tom is a good explainer… [Technorati tags: TomCoates tagging taxonomy EverythingIsMiscellaneous]

Categories: Uncategorized dw