Tagging and the Average Joe

Amit Agarwal of Digital Inspiration has analyzed the tagging behavior of users on four websites that have helped popularize folksonomy-style tagging: Flickr, del.icio.us, Technorati and YouTube. According to Agarwal, the results indicate that the Average Joe is a better tagger than the tech-savvy user.

Agarwal suggests that Technorati, YouTube and del.icio.us are more tech-oriented sites that the friendly photo-sharing site Flickr. Possibly a stretch, but I’d agree that photo-sharing transcends the boundaries of geekdom.

Using Google search to analyze the number of distinct tags used at each site, here’s what he found:

• Technorati: 403,000 tags
• YouTube: 2.1 million tags
• del.icio.us: 877,000 tags
• Flickr: 4.7 million tags

This got me thinking. As you know, I’m a big fan of folksonomy tagging. I regularly use Flickr and del.icio.us, and slightly less frequently YouTube and Technorati. And on top of that, my vocation (and avocation) make me passionate about knowledge management. One of the early concepts incorporated into most knowledge management systems in the 90s was that of a taxonomy for knowledge. A structured approach at organizing knowledge for easy lookup and retrieval.

The trouble with taxonomies is two-fold. First, they are often only understood by the person who created them. The layperson is befuddled. Second, the structure quickly turns to inflexibility upon real-world application. This is one of the reasons Clay Shirky supports folksonomy-style tagging, as he discussed at last year’s Emerging Tech conference.

But can folksonomy tagging take hold in an enterprise environment? Will the success that Flickr has experienced with the Average Joe translate into the corporate world? Will the Average Employee grasp the personal value of tagging? It’s a question worthy of further study. In my own experience on Flickr, I’ve seen some people go absolutely nuts with tags, while others neglect to use any at all.

I suspect we’ll see similar behavior behind the firewall. As with Flickr, some people get the value proposition of tagging, while others don’t. Some need time to discover that value, and will eventually have their “ah-hah!” moment. The beauty of tagging is that once you get it, it’s not a chore to tag items. It’s your own personal breadcrumb trail back to that photo, that link, or that video. It frees your mind from rote memorization of a rigid and often cryptic taxonomy, and puts you back in charge of the stuff that matters to you. And isn’t that what we all want?

technorati tags: folksonomy, tagging, del.icio.us, flickr, youtube, technorati, taxonomy, km