thoughts on tagging

Tagging is a very useful and easy feature to use on the different sites such as Flickr, Del.icio.us, and Technorati. Tagging helps people organize and find information in their own accounts by allowing them to decide how to tag the different photos, bookmarks, or blog posts. It does not take up too much more of their time to quickly add tags when they are creating or adding the individual items to their accounts. Not only do they now have some organization in their own account but everyone can take advantage of that organization. It is easy for people to find other items tagged by other people with the same tag. No one person is left with the huge and time consuming task of trying to organize all of the blog posts, pictures, or bookmarks. On the other hand, a disadvantage of tagging is that you would not necessarily have good recall because you might not find the items tagged with a synonym of the word you are using. You would have to try to think of all the possible tags for the subject you are looking for. On the other hand if you are looking for some blog posts, some pictures, or some bookmarks about a subject instead of everything about that subject on Technorati, Flickr, or Del.icio.us, then what the tag returns might be enough to meet your needs.