Why Is Tagging So Hard?

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Why Is Tagging So Hard?

Michael Parekh has a post up today called "On Why Is Tagging So Frickin' Hard?"

It is a really good post and anyone who is interested in this subject of tagging should go read it.

Michael was inspired to write the post after reading Tom Evslin's post on how he integrated tagging, comments, and trackbacks into his Typepad blog.

Michael has a good sense of humor and he goes on to say:

And what did Tom invest in making these very commendable, and helpful changes?
In his words:
For the last thirty-six hours I have been writing code to make my blog more useful (with help from both TypePad and del.icio.us).
Now, this is Tom Evslin, who as his bio states:
Tom Evslin was cofounder (with wife Mary), Chairman and CEO of ITXC Corp. ...

Evslin conceived, launched, and ran AT&T’s first ISP, AT&T WorldNet Service. ...

At Microsoft, Evslin was responsible for the server products now in Microsoft BackOffice including Microsoft Exchange and for Exchange’s predecessor Microsoft Mail. .....

Evslin is an inventor on five granted US patents.
Whew, now I know what it takes to implement tags on my web site.

Now, I know Tom pretty well and he is truly a top notch technologist.

But you honestly don't need to be an inventor on five granted US patents to use tagging services like del.icio.us.

Tagging isn't as intuitive as it needs to be and it does take some work to figure out how to use some of this stuff.

But Tom's specific issues were related to making his RSS feed work like his blog posts, with links built in for tagging with del.icio.us, commenting, and trackbacking.

That's hard stuff and I haven't even begun to tackle that problem, although Tom has now shared his work with all of us so I plan to do it soon.

The problem is that TypePad, Blogger, and other blogging platforms haven't integrated this stuff that we all want to use into their systems. So we are forced to write HTML to make it happen. That's not going work as blogging goes mainstream.

Over a year ago, I wrote a post called Blogging Tools Suck. It was a pretty popular post at the time with over 10 trackbacks and 20 comments.

Go read it and you'll see that very few of the things that I asked for have been delivered by TypePad. And my list is a lot longer now. I want del.icio.us integration, I want better Flickr integration, I want better Technorati integration, etc, etc.

I don't really fault TypePad for this. The people who run TypePad are doing a good job keeping up with the rate of growth and keeping the service moving in the right direction.

Their problem is a fundamental issue with Web 2.0.

In a Web 2.0 world, apps are built on top of apps, using open APIs, allowing users to mix and match to create the best experience for their needs.

If you are a nerd, like Tom Evslin or me, that's pretty cool.

If you are The Gotham Gal, that's not going to work one bit.

In a Web 1.0 world, a company like TypePad would build everything themself.

But in Web 2.0, other services, like Flickr, Technorati, del.icio.us, AdSense, Google Maps, Bloglet, SiteMeter, Feedburner, etc that have gained significant user traction, need to be supported.

That's a major headache and it will be interesting to see how TypePad and other blogging platforms deal with it.

It's almost an advertisement for an open source platform like WordPress where the users can actually add this kind of stuff into the platform.

So TypePad is faced with the fact that many of their users want Web 2.0 style integration and they need to build it themself. That's a lot of work without much benefit to them. But I see no other choice for them over the long haul other than to deliver that kind of integration.

But back to tagging before I wrap up this long rambling post.

I believe that tagging is hard to get for many first time users because in "open tagging services" like del.icio.us, furl, simpy, etc, you don't tag in the service. You tag somewhere else.

That's a disconnnect that many first time users don't understand.

The best way to solve this is to do what Tom has done, and what many others (including me) have done, which is to put links to whatever "open tagging service" you like right in your blog and your RSS feed.

That makes tagging happen where users want to tag, not in the service itself.

Over time, I believe these tagging links will appear all over the web and tagging will become a lot easier.

I also think that the services like del.icio.us can solve these first time user issues with other user interface solutions.

But for now, tagging is "so frickin' hard".

Recognizing that is the first step to making it easier.

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Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Why Is Tagging So Hard?:

» ON WHY IS TAGGING SO FRICKIN' HARD? from *michael parekh on IT*
TAG ME IF YOU CAN In a post a few days ago, I touched on the darker side of tags, specifically in the ways that tags can and are being used by spammers and spam blogs* . I remain convinced that tags can be a very useful part of the web going forward, a... [Read More]

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Posted August 7, 2005 in Venture Capital and Technology

Comments

Tagging IS hard. Blogging is natural, but then, if you care about access and distribution, you spend a half hour or more manually doing stuff that any good text editor does with HTML formatting in a single click. With DHTML, or AJAX, rather, it would be fairly easy to create a an intelligent tagger that my brain is too fried to think about right now, but I'm thinking it presents a menu like a right-click thesaurus of relevant terms fed by delicious or some other service and now I'm just babbling. Feel free to bump my post down or off. Back to cleaning up GiftWorks 2.0--Beta II tomorrow...

Posted by: charlie crystle | Aug 7, 2005 7:24:59 PM

Good points Fred on why the Blogging Tools are so frickin' hard as well...especially in terms of how the "older" services like Typepad who were creating an eon ago (in internet time) are likely having a harder time making many of the open source initiatives work on their platforms AND accommodate the business model conflicts that likely result as well.

Tagging is just one of many new services that need to get more easily integrated into these platforms.

But they do have a short-term advantage in that a lot of existing users won't likely bolt as easily for a Wordpress or other platform that makes it easier to do these other things since the opportunity costs of moving one's platform are so frickin' high and it's hard to do from a technical perspective as well.

It's their opportunity to lose.

It's interesting that one doesn't see as wide a discussion of these issues as one might expect to date.

Thanks for the thoughtful response.

Posted by: Michael Parekh | Aug 7, 2005 7:30:07 PM

I think there's a couple of interesting points raised here, and maybe I can give some perspective from our side of things in making platforms like TypePad and Movable Type and LiveJournal.

First, large-scale tagging is pretty doable on current platforms; LiveJournal has put tags in front of millions of users, and I believe over a million tags were assigned to entries there in just the first few weeks tags were available. For Movable Type, we have the Tags plugin available, and on both Movable Type and TypePad, catgories used in posts are recognized as tags automatically by Technorati.

So, in a very real sense, we've got tagging ability in front of 10 million+ bloggers on our platforms today.

But the problem gets a lot more complicated when you dive further into it. Do you want "me" tags or "we" tags? (Are tags for you to recall your own posts, or for others to describe your posts?) Should there be both kinds of tags, and if so, should both or one or neither be syndicated? What about display options for tags? Do we really want to inflict another tag cloud on people? And archiving... there's a ton of stuff that can be done here, just like our existing category archives, but should we support tag intersections? (/tags/foo+bar works in a URL on LiveJournal, but doesn't work with tags on Technorati. Which is right?)

I think the goal here is to first enable common scenarios, like participating in Technorati's tags, by having it be automatic in the tools. That's present today in TypePad. The next milestone will be to afford all of the interactions described above, with complete customizability and flexiblity and personalization, without having the options be overwhelming. And we're working on that now. Honestly, that's a problem that almost nobody's solved, because other tools that use tags right now are designed for information that defaults to being public, but the need for things like LiveJournal's built-in support for private/non-public tags isn't widely understood or discussed even amidst all the hype about tags.

Oh, and good news about including other services in your TypePad site: As Mena announced at BlogHer, we'll be offering the ability to publish any XML feed on your TypePad sidebar shortly. And there's already programmatic access for third parties to be able to add their links and content to your sidebar using the TypePad API, as services like MyBlogLog are doing already.

Posted by: Anil | Aug 8, 2005 12:34:34 AM

Anil: if you choose to take an open approach to various tag problems you described above, and are interested in creating open proposals, let me know. As the person behind Simpy, I'm interested in increasing the value of tags for people around the globe.

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