Tag, You're It!

You may have noticed that I don't do Technorati tags or digg or anything like that here at verbatim. Partly because I'm so anal that I would feel the need to go back and assign tags to all my old posts from the past three years, which makes me want to crawl back into bed and pull the covers up over my head. Partly because I'm also so anal that I would make myself positively crazy thinking of all the possible tags I would need and whether any given post fit into multiple tag categories. And partly because I really have trouble believing that it would get me more of the kinds of readers I'm hoping to reach. Really, is a tag like "parenting" or "books" going to help someone find me? Maybe I'm way off, but I think that most people Google the specific things they're seeking, and I do get most of my new readers that way (as in, "Hey, I was looking for the lyrics to a John Hiatt song and found your blog. . . . I think I'll stick around!"). I'm also not really in this for the hit-counting; there's no question that I love when new readers find me, but I'm not trying to find every possible way to get out there. (All that being said, anyone who wants to give me some linky-love on their own blog is always greatly appreciated.)

But the concept of tags has gotten into my mind, and I realized that I categorize all the people in my life into tag groups. Whether they're NPR stories, blogs or other web sites, music/movie/book reviews, news stories, or whatever, I see something and immediately make a connection to my friends or family members who might be interested in it. The groups overlap; I might send a blurb about a new Jet Li movie to two different people and a great lamb recipe to two other people, but one person from each of those two pairs might also get a link to a "Fresh Air" show featuring Willie Nelson. I wonder if this is just because I'm an organization nerd who likes to sort and collate and group and put things away where they go, or does everyone think that way?

Comments

[scott]

I'm fascinated by this whole subject. With google-like searching and lots of metadata tags on everything, knowledge has become less tree-shaped and more .. web/cloud shaped. one cool thing I like about some tagging schemes is that the owner/authorisn't the only one who gets to tag the thing. Other people get to say what it is, not just the creator. Flickr is a really good example of this, i think. And del.icio.us, although I have never really got into the habit of using that one.

[Kathy]

I stopped tagging because it looks messy and cluttered. Is that incredibly shallow? Am I missing out on scads of readers because of it? I tagged my posts when I used typepad -- it was fairly easy to do so -- but since I switched to wp, I don't. I find blogs on other blogs (I found yours on 50 Books, I think), and rarely do I use tag searches as I find them wholly unnecessary. I tag photos on Flickr, though, but that has to do with the general lack of text I tend to provide with each picture. (And my flickr tags are fairly boring: cat, tree, etc...)

[Karen]

If it's shallow, then count me in -- I don't like the clutter either.

I'm likely to be the last person on the planet to have a flickr account, but if I ever do, I'll revisit the tag idea.