Tagging & Findability

I’ve been thinking more about the value of metadata and the challenges in tagging. Clearly we want more data traveling with files. Hard data like source and profile, but also soft associations like folksonomies and tags. I think most people are probably very loose with their tagging and become quickly overwhelmed by the giant tag clouds they create. For people with a lot of content it becomes very important to limit the scope of their taxonomy/dictionary. Likewise, as the audience for content expands it becomes more important to have matadata that is useful and meaningful to the widest range of people. So, highly subjective tagging actually creates more noise around the content and limits its findability.

Which leads to the real value and goal of tagging: findability. Search and sort. So much data is overwhelming. We need simple and intuitive ways to filter the sample. The old way of arranging files in hierarchical folders is fading. And really, for most people the file hierarchy was a necessary structure imposed by the OS but which is generally just a framework for associative cataloging. Most people filing their photos name their folders by association. Vacations. Family. Pets. Tokyo 2008. The value of these terms is not in where they live but what they are.

In an increasingly networked cloud, the physical location of content is unimportant but findability is critical.