Matt Locke - Innovation Director at the BBC Innovation Team - joins the Content 2.0 debate as a guest contributor in the Search & Enjoy session, NMK can confirm.
[UPDATE]: Matt will now be giving the scenesetter talk: 'Folksonomies: What Are They Good For?' For more details see the Schedule.
Matt's boss, BBC Director Of New Media & Technology Ashley Highfield gave a facinating interview to Content 2.0 media partner New Media Age last week on their long terms plans. But unfortunately most of the NMA feature articles aren't accessible on their website to non-subscribers, so no link love there sadly!
However, freelance journalist Bill Thompson captured some of the points touched on by Ashley even. before that, in his exploration of Microsoft's Mix '06 conference in Las Vegas in March and the wider Web 2.0 phenomenon.
Matt, in turn, has been publicly ruminating on folksonomy and the role of tagging on his blog since February 2005, an intial contribution that has been widely discussed and debated, not least by Clay Shirky on the Corante group blog.
Matt is currently tantalising us with the prospect of divulging some insights that the BBC have gained through their R&D into tagging and their experimentation with and plans for tagging in the broader context of search.
What I'd like is some input from the wider world on the whole tagging debate pre-conference. It's not just about the 6th of June after all ;-)
What do folks in the UK and elsewhere think?
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Facet-based classification schemes (tagging) need frameworks
Tagging arose from library classification systems. The key thinker was Shiyali Ranganathan (1872-1972). Peter Memes was the first to introduce tagging on the web.
The usefulness of tagging depends upon context.
In a bookmarking service the user is effectively building a relational database where the tags represent both field headings and the query criteria.
Unfortunately most users have no experience of databases or the process of normalisation. Consequently their tag cloud billows in size and they end up adding more and more tags in the hope of finding something again, a process that becomes self defeating.
A great many people also have great difficulty in grasping the concept of tagging. Hence so many 'cool' 'cute' & 'funny' tags applied to just everything. Only of limited use and increasingly less so when overused. (More to look through.)
Imagine a library where people could put books back where they expected to find them. In some cases it would lead to a more intuitively logical order. In other cases it would lead to books becoming unfindable by anyone other than the person who placed it on a shelf. (Unless you had enough copies of each book for everyone.)
Interestingly I now pay more attention to tracking down people I surmise think like me (Friends & Fans in bookmarking) rather than individual tags