Tagging the Web

TVC Alert reported on an interesting thought about further indexing the web. TVC Alert writes "Can Tagging Improve Free Web Search? (31 Mar) Citing a conference paper on the topic, Phil Bradley asserts that social tagging could go a long way toward improving traditional Web search. I think it's a potential worth exploring. I've been impressed with the use of tags in search results in smaller experiments such as LibraryThing.
Phil also shares a tip for finding tagged information at del.icio.us. I'd like to add that the following format automatically generates an RSS feed: http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/[insert your tag here]."

Yahoo tried to do something like this in the early days with their human indexers. Their idea was good and their implementation was great, because they considered consistency to be important. So, I don't think the reemergence of this idea is crazy at all, but I worry about the taxonomy piece. What about the variations in terms e.g."social networking sites" vs. "SNS"? Is anyone going to link them? If they aren't linked, you will have to do additional searches in order to be convinced that you have done your search work thoroughly. I think the message is to tag pages if you have the opportunity and we'll have to see how the search piece shakes out.

Companies Behind the SN 8 Ball?

Susan Mernit was laid off from Yahoo! yesterday, no doubt the result of Yahoo's current woes. The interesting thing about her blog post is the effect of social networking and how she analyzes the effect of her actions on FaceBook, Twitter and her blog. It will be interesting to see how this develops.

Google is at it Again

If you have your own blog, you have probably seen the little ad after you have published a post suggesting that you try out Google docs and spreadsheets. Google has now introduced presentation software, an alternative to Powerpoint. Jill Hurst-Wahl mentioned it in the article we posted yesterday and Tara Calishan, from ResearchBuzz also talks about it in her post from September 18.

One of the good things that both have mentioned is that you don't have to e-mail a doc back and forth when you are collaborating. You will also not need to be on the correct computer (laptop vs. desktop) or have it available to you on your flash drive.

Remember, as with most Google offerings, you have to have Google account. Your content may end up searchable, so don't put any sensitive or trouble causing docs up there and password protect all of your docs.

Social Networking Explanations and Definitions

Blogs and wikis and twitter, oh my!

Are you confused about the exploding world of social networking tools? There are a lot of them out there and they are not just for fun and games any more. Jill Hurst-Wahl has written a very comprehensive article in the recent SLA IT Division's newsletter, b/yte.

Jill Hurst-Wahl is a digitization consultant based in New York.