Web2.0: Tagging — a Key Technology set for migration to the Enterprise

The Pew Internet and America Life Project Survey reported in December that 28% of Internet users have used Web 2.0 tagging features and 7% use tagging on a daily basis.  Tagging or Folksonomy is a method that lets users apply labels to web content, particularly photos and videos, for classifying content and for speeding up searches to later find content.  The report jokes “Forget Dewey and his Decimals”, Web 2.0 is revolutionizing content search.

Tagging is less systematic and all-inclusive than Dewey’s system, but it’s proved to be very effective.  In some ways tagging is like the next-generation jump from Newtonian to Quantum mechanics.  Quantum statistics improved the precision and ability of the types of phenomena that could be accurately modeled.

The internet attracts huge numbers of users who can collectively throw darts in many directions in order to solve a problem.  In the case of tagging, one user can take content and can see characteristics relevant to the world view of that person.  That one piece of content could then be tagged in many different ways by different people, and the tag framework supports and encourages the diversity of views.

Search based on a rigid classification system can be frustrating.  Consider what happens when you look for a book in a library’s card catalog.  You may not get far if you can’t guess which category a book has been designated.  Seek out the reference librarian for help.  The same is true in the enterprise — experienced and trained records managers are often needed to conclusively located a piece of information.  With tags, it’s likely someone before you has already tagged the content you’re looking for with a term that is relevant to you, and if not, you can tag it so that the next time you look for it finding it will be a snap.

With the rate that tagging is catching on in consumer space, it is destined to become a feature of enterprise applications, and it may importantly supplement more standard classification or records management techniques. 

Gartner has identified tagging as one of the seven core benefits that have come out of Web 2.0 technologies.  Tagging helps enterprise workers collaborate better and search data and documents that are both internal and external to the organization.