From ScribbleWiki: Analysis of Social Media

Tagging Paper, Taxonomy, Flickr, Academic Article, To Read

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Overview

This is the first paper that comprehensively provided description of the academic related work in Folksonomy. According to Google Scholars, the paper is cited from more than 50 papers.

Authors analyzed and compared the design and features of many existing social tagging systems, and came up with what it takes to characterize a tagging system. They classified the key design issues into two large categories: "System Design and Attributes" and "User Incentives"

System Design and Atrributes

Below is a list of key dimensions of tagging systems’ design that may have immediate and considerable effect on the content and usefulness of tags generated by the system.

Tagging Rights

• Selftagging: users only tag the resources they created (e.g., Technorati)
• Free-for-all tagging: any user can tag any resource (e.g., Yahoo! Podcasts)
• Compromise tagging: between above two
  • choose the resources users are to tag (such as images in the ESP Game)
  • specify different levels of permissions to tag (as with the friends, family, and contact distinctions in Flickr).

Tagging Support

• Blind tagging: user cannot view tags assigned to the same resource by other users while tagging (e.g., Del.icio.us)
• Viewable tagging: user can see the tags already associated with a resource (e.g., Yahoo! Podcasts)
• Suggestive tagging: the system suggests possible tags to the user (e.g., Yahoo! MyWeb2.0).
  • based on existing tags by the same user
  • based on automatically gathered contextual metadata, or machine-suggested tag

Aggregation

• Bag-model: the system may allow for a multiplicity of tags for the same resource which may result in duplicate tags from different users (e.g., Del.icio.us)
• Set-model: many systems ask the group to collectively tag an individual resource, thus denying any repetition (e.g., YouTube, Flickr).

Type of object

• Web pages (e.g., Del.icio.us, Yahoo!MyWeb2.0)
• Bibliographic material (e.g., CiteULike)
• Blog posts (e.g., Technorati, LiveJournal)
• Images (e.g., Flickr, ESP Game)
• Users (e.g., LiveJournal)
• video (YouTube)
• audio objects (e.g., Last.fm; Yahoo! Podcasts, Odeo)

Source of material

• Resources to be tagged can be supplied
  • by the participants (e.g., YouTube, Flickr, Technorati, Upcoming)
  • by the system (e.g., ESP Game, Last.fm, Yahoo! Podcasts)
• A system can be open for tagging of any web resource (e.g., Del.icio.us, Yahoo! MyWeb2.0)

Resource connectivity

Resources in the system can be linked to each other independent of the user tags. Connectivity can be roughly categorized as:

• Linked (e.g., web pages)
• Grouped (e.g., Flickr)
• None

Social connectivity

Some systems allow users within the system to be linked together. Like resource connectivity,

• Linked
• Grouped
• None

User Incentives

Incentives and motivations for users are also very important. A large part of the motivations and influences of tagging system users is determined by the system design and the method by which they are exposed to inherent tagging practices.

Future retrieval

• To mark items for personal retrieval (examples: tagging a group of papers on Del.icio.us in preparation for writing a book, tagging songs on Last.FM to create an adhoc playlist, tagging Flickr photos `home’ to be able to find all photos taken at home later)

Contribution and sharing

• To add to conceptual clusters for the value of either known or unknown audiences.
  • Examples: tag vacation websites for a partner, contribute concert photos and identifying tags to Flickr for anyone who attended the show

Attract Attention

• To get people to look at one’s own resource because they are common tags.
  • Users may be incentivized to create spam tags

Play and Competition

• To produce tags based on rules.
  • In some cases, the system devises the rules such as the ESP Game’s incentive to tag what others might also

tag.

Self Presentation

• To write a user’s own identity into the system
  • as a way of leaving their mark on a particular resource.
  • for example, the “seen live” tag in Last.FM marks an individual’s identity or personal relation to the resource.

Opinion Expression

• To convey value judgments that they wish to share with others
  • for example, the “elitist” tag in Yahoo!’s Podcast system is utilized by some users to convey an opinion.