We've just put up some thoughts on a research programme at Skype Journal - would love your thoughts and suggestions .... or if anyone wishes to participate in any way, do drop in a comment here or contact us - the links are provided at the SkypeJournal post.   

2:37:10 PM    comment []  trackback []

I'm exploring Tagging.  Am late to the party - still.... 

I always used Google Alert which in some ways is personal tagging. I like Furl - its easy bookmarking and can be shared with others. I never really explored del.icio.us enough. Flickr tagsare so so cool. And I'm enjoying Technorati tags - i remember Ethan telling me, when he was in India, that he uses this so effectively - he tags a region he is interested in and follows all blogs and posts made - he has discovered bridge blogs and made some delightful and unexpected connections as a result.  That is so cool!

I'm beginning to feel the power is really in the emergent language it allows you to create for yourself, in the structure and meaning you imbue in ordering the chaos. In some ways within your own control. And it is in how this language and meaning you create can be shared over the web.

I'm still not clear though about the differences between bookmarks, keywords, tags and folksonomies. Is it that some are private and others social?  Is it in the control - whether under the user or the community building the folksonomies or the algorithm? Is it semantic?

Hmmmmmm.

UPDATE :

Jon helps me with this explanation : "Bookmarks are not necessarily categorized, and keywords can be used in many contexts including tagging. Tags use keywords for categories that the user defines (rather than trying to fit into some existing taxonomy), so you have emergent tags. Folksonomy is what you get at a site like del.ico.us, where you have visibility into all the tags developed by everybody, and shared categories emergeÖ people adapt their tagging to existing categories in some cases, and create their own in others. Itís a messy, democratic, energized, stimulating way of doing taxonomy"

9:43:42 AM    comment []  trackback []