« Papers: Awareness and Presence | Main | Wednesday - Does Think Aloud Work? How Do We Know? - 14:30 - Room 517AB »

April 27, 2006

Wednesday - Why Do Tagging Systems Work? - 11:30 - Room 517AB

This panel provided an overview of tagging and also raised the issues and concerns that go along with it. The panel was primarily comprised of people affiliated with Yahoo!, including the founder of del.icio.us, Joshua Schachter.

Why Do Tagging Systems Work? PanelFor this panel, Yahoo! created a tagging game. Audience members were invited to go to a website, and type in different tags for every part of the presentation (e.g. when talking about Flickr, people would type "Flickr" in the form on the website and receive points based on how many other people used the tag). A tag cloud was presented on the stage left and stage right screens. Unfortunately, one could easily be distracted from the content of the presentation with this game, and also the Wi-Fi managed to disappear halfway into the presentation.

The panel began talking about what tagging systems are, and why people tag. Video interviews were conducted for the panel interviewing several everyday people on the street about tagging. With the exception of one person, everyone interviewed did not really understand the core principles of tagging.

Some concerns raised in this panel were that everyday people outside the tech community will probably never tag. Also, people have a problem with overtagging; some people do not know when to stop when tagging something. Sometimes people also have a hard time finding a tagged object if the tag is too vague.

Two primarily conclusions were drawn as to why people tag: people tag to share and to recall information. Most of the websites that people go to and search for are websites that they have already visited before.

All panelists were unsure of the future of tagging, but said they were excited to see where it goes in the future.

Posted by sv6 at April 27, 2006 07:58 AM

Comments

Post a comment




Remember Me?