We have implemented a del.icio.us like social bookmarking service and are currently trialling a new web based rss aggregation system within our organisation. Both of these applications allow you to tag content.
People who use both services are starting to ask whether they should be suing their RSS reader or the social bookmarking service to tag their content.
The answer is imperfect - you should use both.
Tagging is useful - it allows people to add their own semantics to content they are interested in, which provides an instant benefit to them, and engages them in the application they are using. For this reason tagging is becoming part of the core functionality of most Web2.0 applications.
This is a great thing because it increases the usability and usefulness of a service. However the problem is that while there are many places that you can tag things, you are essentially building lots of siloed tag collections that are difficult to aggregate. In the web2.0 space this is born out of the fact that all these services are competing with one another, to manage your information, and therefore there is no advantage in allowing you to share your tags with other applications.However within the firewall, this competitive element is stripped away and we have the opportunity to create an integrated environment.
Therefore I think we need to start thinking of tagging as a service.
Tagging as a service will allow your Enterprise 2.0 infrastructure to share a central repository for tagging. This means that when a user adds a tag in one application , it can be expressed in any number of others instantly with no further effort from the user.
Therefore adding tagging to an E2.0 application not only adds value to that application, but it increases the value of your whole Enterprise 2.0 infrastructure. For your users this will increase engagement and multiply the return that user receives from their initial investment in tagging.
Its a really simple concept but something I think that is being overlooked by the Enterprise 2.0 community at the moment.
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3 comments:
Hi Jason,
Good point. Shows me that you guys are a bit ahead of us in implementing E2.0.
About the characteristic of that "tagging service": what would it offer other than a database table(s) stating:
+ username
+ applications using tags
+ tags you used be application
of course with some kind of mechanism to aggregate tags and bring up existing tags (Like del.icio.us does) so that you don't end up with "Social+software" and "socialsoftware". What are your idea's on that?
Best regards,
Marcel
Hi Marcel,
Yes that was what i was thinking, maybe even a little simpler - a db that associates a URI with tags and users, I am not sure that you need to specify what application you used to tag the resource as the tag is something personal to you and not the application.
Another advantage of this is that you would be able to ask the service to "Suggest" a tag based on tags already used for that URI like the del.icio.us service does, but for all your E2.0 apps.
Again I agree - I see "del.icio.us like" apps being like your rss reader for tags - it will be your one stop shop for accessing your personal tag library, which you can contribute to from any Enterprise 2.0 application within your firewall.
Mmmmm, I am not convinced. I love the idea, but I do not think services is the way to provide it. Even if there was an open api for this (not sure there is) then it is still a massive undertaking to either integrate with or reverse engineer into existing applications.
I think that is why I like Connectbeam. It is almost like a tagging proxy, a layer that sits above all your applications and data (well, anything that has a URI) and allows you to apply tags.
The thing is, that does mean that you still end up having to tag in two places - the source, and then connectbeam (unless of course connectbeam extracts those by default, but that is more details that I know...)
Ricardo.
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