Tag along
Some times people feel compelled to create their own landmarks in places they have been. Inuksuk and grafitti are two of my favorite examples. These serve as physical reference points for the individual who creates them and others that share the space, declaring i was here, or this is the way, among many other messages. They communicate to all others who pass that location.
What interests me, is that the same user behaviour can be observed on the web, for example by users saving, and tagging links. Recently,this abilty for users to leave personal landmarks, or tags for all to see has become popular. Often referred to as folksonomy, a socially constructed network of metadata is evolving and becoming a dominant force in web navigation, search, and communication. Whats going on here? What compels users to input ‘keywords’ of associated meaning alongside specific content on the web? What is the ROI?
Although users have their own intentions and context for tagging content, it is becoming clear, tags have a life of their own and as a collected set, new meanings can be observed. Anthony and I wish to explore this idea a little further.
Interesting post, I’d not thought to compare tagging to graphitti before, despite the obvious linguistic link. It seems like the comparison can be extended beyond tagging, to blogging (what is blogging but a different form of graphitti?), and other forms of new media social network interaction.
Comment by nathan — January 15, 2006 @ 12:50 am
Graffiti seems to be more about a persons relationship to their environment (I was here), whereas tagging defines the environments relationship to the person (this is a tree, it is green).
The Social aspect of popular folksonomy systems (del.icio.is flickr et al.) creates an interesting combination of the two, allowing a person to share where they have been (be it a bookmark or photo) and to describe what it means to them.
Comment by Anton — January 15, 2006 @ 5:30 am
good points. my idea in making a relationship between grafitti and tagging is to esablish some precedence for why a user would want to ‘tag’ in the first place. Kinda inspired by that ‘palace of the mind’ stuff.
There are clearly personal benfits to tagging(retreival), but in a public info spaces, you share your ideas with all. Everyone will use the space differently, personal expression will reign, while bubbles of collective activity emerge.
Comment by draggin — January 15, 2006 @ 11:40 pm