User-defined data structures

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 04 January 2006 08:34:02

Yes, it sounds boring, but it isn't. As one Matthew Cahill says in his intelligent article on tagging, they are neato. And I believe him, not just because he Gets It, but because he has a gorgeous-looking site, and is respected enough to have recently been made a member of the 9rules network.

I can't really add anything to what Matt Cahill said, although I will stress that one of the most powerful advantages of this tagging malarkey is that users don't even have to know they are doing it. For example, I could make the Wiblog system make every word in this post a tag so people could search by it, and output some pretty reports and statistics about how many times each word has been used. I won't, because this is far too much text with far too many non-essential tag words in it ("too", "in", "it" etc). But how about auto-tagging the subject? Easy-peasy.

So, tagging is not only putting the power back in the users hands, it doesn't even have to be a chore for them. Fantastic.