Tagging, search, indexes, RSS and sharing

Very good article from News.com on the impact of 'social tagging' or 'free tagging' or 'folksonomies" on the Web. Wiki definition on tagging can be found here. Put into historical context. I strongly believe many large web services will be impacted by this trend as the scale of Web usage is large enough, both on the fixed Internet (online dating, anyone?) and mobile Internet (as witnessed by the WaveMarket application and other upcoming LBS based tagging services). And what about all those P2P tagging possibilities? And what will be the impact of tagging on The Long Tail? Tagging is all about emerging concepts, discovery, serendipity and emotional/social connecting with others. In my view, the latter aspect is neglected in most discussions on tagging, especially the emotional part of it. Bottom-up tags convey more emotion and identity than top-down categories or indexes. It is in a sense an extension of companies like Autonomy (bottom-up knowledge management) but then human-like and socially more impactful (Kevin Kelly's network effect or Metcalfe's Law). This brings to light some risks: spam and the (necessary) time invested in tagging.
Highly recommended reading.

"The democratization of information is the real interesting thing about this, said Bob Rosenschein, CEO of GuruNet, an answer search engine. They're messy and noisy and they're not always accurate, but they're people talking about real subjects; and in that manner they have tremendous statistical interest when they get to scale. There's a wisdom of the crowd. The most interesting applications are before us. It's a deceptively simple premise that holds enormous consequences for information management, boosters believe, provided the stars align properly. In addition to Flickr, up-and-coming communities at Wikipedia, Del.icio.us and others have many people pondering the future of free tagging, as some call it."

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[Dan]

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