Tag, You're It

I found the article Social Tagging as a Knowledge Organization and Resource Discovery Tool to be much more lengthy and in-depth than I would have expected for a fairly simple concept such as tagging. I mean, how much can you really say about tags? (A lot, apparently!) I guess if you are completely unfamiliar with social tagging, this article would be a valuable resource to learning all there is to know about tags. What I found interesting from this article:

- I have a Flickr account, and one of my favorite things to do with it is "tag surf".  I'll admit it, I mostly like to look at pictures of food. I can go from pictures of cheese, to pictures of cheese with bread, to just bread, to bread with eggs, to just eggs, etc. It's great to be able to zone in on particular keywords, then let those keywords direct you to related ones - rather than, say, randomly perusing a jumble of pictures in no order or relationship. I can also see how if a user has uploaded many, many pictures, they can use their own tags to keep track of and find particular photos.  The same is true for sites like YouTube. I can easily go to that site looking for one particular video and spend the next two hours clicking on the next one...and the next one...and the next one...The article asks "Why would users keep surfing social tagging websites knowing that they may drift from their search target? Perhaps this is a different kind of distraction, one that is enjoyable, adds to the users' knowledge, or that leads users closer to what is relevant to them." Precisely.
There's a line in the article about how users "tend to increase their tag when perceiving that others are seeing them." To me, this is kind of the point. I don't tag my own pictures on my hard drive because it's just me looking at them (although I do group them into folders such as "dogs" or "family" so I can find things when I want them.)

In addition to YouTube and Flickr, I also explored CiteUlike and Librarything. CiteUlike seems very useful and user friendly.  When I did a search for "social media", I appreciated that it not only returned over 800 articles, but it also showed other users and groups interested in this subject.  I also liked that people can rate and "like" articles - it seems like this would be a useful way to weed out and sort through so many articles. Finally, Librarything - how did I not know about this?! I immediately signed up and spent a slow afternoon at work trying to remember all the books I've read recently and filling up my catalog. This might be dangerous for me, I can already tell I'll probably be spending more time than I should on that site....