[TagCommons-WG] Use Cases for Sharing Tag Data

[Thomas Vander Wal]

I will start with this little project description.  It is a cross
application tagging search tool.  It is simple tag search across 14 or so
tagging services.  The project is a proof of concept for something larger,
which has not moved forward.

The project started with answering a simple question, "what tagging service
should I use" that came after every presentation on tagging I gave.  The
answer depends on what that person's interest is, what they call things, and
what service has people tagging in a similar manner.

The tagging search tool sets out to provide an answer to that simple
question by providing the ability to see results to a simple tag term
grouped by tagging services in reverse chron order.  The person can add and
remove tagging services in the search then save and then grab an RSS feed of
those services when new items are added.

The project still runs, but is not currently being developed.  I went to
shut the service down but 2/3rds of those using the tool found it helpful
and it scratched an itch they could not otherwise scratch.

I have mostly been using it for research.

- I have watched tag terms over time across various services and watched
interest in a tag/subject move from one service to another.

- The same person may use the same tag term (such as "design") differently
on different tagging services (use as in visual design context on Ma.gnolia,
while using it for system design on del.icio.us).

- Since the site currently only searches simple terms it is really apparent
that tag combinations are extremely valuable as is having a common object
being tagged for disambiguation of tag terms.

I went into the project thinking there were three valuable legs to tagging
(identity, object being tagged, and each tag), but found that the tagging
venue is also important to capture when working to share tags and
disambiguate terms.


On 2/16/07 7:18 PM, "Tom Gruber" <onto at tomgruber.org> wrote:


> Thomas Vander Wal has an application that does Cross Application Tagging.
> Thomas, would you mind telling us about that?

All the best,
Thomas

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