Comments on: Lonely Tagger

By: mikecaulfield.com » Blog Archive » Bring Us Your Fear!

mikecaulfield.com » Blog Archive » Bring Us Your Fear! — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:16:27 +0000

[...] Alan blogged about how hard it can be to get a group of people to tag Web Sites of Interest around a particular topic. I have no doubt [...]

By: Don’t Cry When Social Media Flops, Just Move On » CogDogBlog

Don’t Cry When Social Media Flops, Just Move On » CogDogBlog — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 16:28:55 +0000

[...] a rather small number of people actually do it, even among an ed-tech attended event. I feel often the lonely tagger about 75% of the tagging, [...]

By: Alan

Alan — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 20:44:10 +0000

Suzy, you sound a bit like some of those questionable emails I get.

Tagging – this is no place to explain it all, start at http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_tagging

By: Suzy

Suzy — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 19:02:35 +0000

Hi, lonely Tagger,

would you like explain to me what does mean” tag or tagging?” I just understand you are lonely for that and someone also following you, sorry for this stupid question, but I hope I can get answer from you! if you have time please mail to me to explain it for me, I just know i am like you just lonely….

By: Bring Us Your Fear! at The Fish Wrapper

Bring Us Your Fear! at The Fish Wrapper — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 16:31:05 +0000

[...] Alan blogged about how hard it can be to get a group of people to tag Web Sites of Interest around a particular topic. I have no doubt [...]

By: After Gamma Comes Love » CogDogBlog

After Gamma Comes Love » CogDogBlog — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 06:29:45 +0000

[...] Feed2JS « Lonely Tagger [...]

By: Brian

Brian — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 20:37:49 +0000

Beth — that’s a very cool breakdown, how did you do your hack?

By: Alan

Alan — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 20:31:04 +0000

Thanks Beth- that was worth may more than 2 cents… and it confirms my hunch is that a small number of small, lonely rudders steer the big ships, and thats okay.

And there are other roles- the people who syndicate tagged content, people who follow links from it, people who share what they discover to other outlets- “ecosystem” is the perfect noun.

By: Beth Kanter

Beth Kanter — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 16:35:10 +0000

Hi Alan,

This is a great reflection. I have 3300 resources in del.icio.us. My first tags were cambodian culture resources starting in April 2005.

We managed to hack del.icio.us and get some stats on nptech tag in del.ici.ous. And what we learned

2400 accounts used nptech tag
5% were super taggers – more than 100 items tagged
10% had between 25-100
the rest were less than 25, many only 1 item

So, this sort of breaks out along the lines of the lurking ratio in online communities.

For NpTech Tag – I think there’s an incentive to tag because a resource may get in the summary. People read the summary and visit those links.

About a year ago, David Weinberger contributed to a pew research report about tagging – I think they found the same numbers – anyway he said, you only need a small percentage of “lonely taggers” to make tagging work for everyone.

So, there are different roles in the tagging ecosystem.

That’s my 2 cents

By: DArcy Norman

DArcy Norman — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 19:11:02 +0000

I think it’s at least partially a result of tagging being a geekish thing initially. Dragging a bookmarklet to a bookmark bar, then remembering to click that to add a bookmark, etc…

But, software is catching up, and getting out to more people. Flock has built-in del.icio.us tagging support, and a giant star button to trigger it. And other software is adding it – Blogbridge has a “pin” feature that can automatically send a feed item to del.icio.us for tagging. It’s becoming as easy, or easier, than not tagging. That’s where it’ll start to take off. When someone says “why wouldn’t I just tag that? it takes too long to save a bookmark…” then it’ll go to the next wave of adoption.

And a focus on “what’s in it for me” will help, too. Tag so stuff is available to you (and also others) from anywhere. No more bookmark files to sync or backup (or live with being out of sync). And if someone else gets some benefit, so be it.