Private tags vs Public Tags
I tried to explain to someone the other the day that there were at least two kinds of tags that I used - "public tags" and "private tags"
Of course both kinds of tags are public - its the reasons why I tag and how I tag that gives rise to this dichotomy.
When I tag something in a social bookmarking system like del.icio.us my express intention is to make that bookmark easily findable by me - the social bookmarking aspect is a desirable effect of the way that del.icio.us handles tags.
But when I post something to my blog and tag it with Technorati tags my express intention is allow other people to find it - the social ranking aspect is just a desirable effect of the way that Technorati handles my tags.
I'll give a concrete example: When I tag sites or posts in del.icio.us with "extreme tales": it means that I want to be able to find those information resources within the context of the "extreme tales" book project I am currently working on.
But when I tag my Extreme Tales blog posts in Technorati with the tag "extreme tales" it means that I want other people to find those posts using the tags "extreme tales" - I don't need those tags for myself because I already know where to find the article I have written.
The tags remain the same but the intentionality behind the act of tagging is different in both cases.
The ultimate private tags are when you tag resources according to something personal - when I tag resources with the name of my wife - that tag has no meaning for anyone else but myself and my wife.
It's an act of private tagging solely designed for our mutual private search space - to enable access to resources that otherwise would be lost.
Anyone else looking at that particluar tagspace would only be confused - a huge bundle of content that is only related by one thing - the personal preferences of someone they don't know and are unlikely to know - tagged solely with their name. This private tag strategy gets a little harder if your wife is called "Ubuntu" or you husband is called "Ajax".
No matter how good tagging, folksonomy and the semantic web become people will still retain these two motivations for tagging - so "private tags" and "public tags" are here to stay.
Tags: tags tag tagging folksonomy tagsonomy tag clouds tagclouds tagspace