Tags are the leaves on the tree, categories (or supertags) are the branches on which they must hang. The fruit is the knowledge to which the tags point.
This Technorati tags analysis is a first step in new supertagging project which aims to bring bloggers the benefits of classification systems (also known as ‘taxonomies’) without all the pain and the jargon. As the author of the best-selling “Taxonomies: Frameworks for Corporate Knowledge” (which sells to corporates at £395 a copy), I believe I can give this public supertagging project some useful guidance and assistance. Material on this blog will be used in a new book, “Taxonomies for taggers: Giving more power to the people” (£5 for a .pdf copy) which will show taggers how to benefit, both themselves and their communities, from the knowing some of the tricks, the mistakes and shortcuts to improving on their ever growing alphabetical list of tags using taxonomies.
To work in the user-led world of bloggers where basic service is provided at no cost, supertags must be free. Therefore, all classification schemas contained on the Supertaggers blog are available for use without copyright restriction, although it is recommended users join the supertaggers conferences (when they are set up) in order to suggest changes, receive updates and to discuss usage issues.
This supertagging project is dedicated to using supertags as a both means of improving the findability of blogs and of monitoring what they are saying. Technorati was chosen as the first to be analysed because it is one of the biggest blog tagging communities in the world with more than 21 million participating bloggers.
The first finding is that Technorati’s top 200-odd English tags can be analysed into 12 top-level categories. All tags fit consistently into the meaning of each category. There was no need to assign two categories to any tags or to use the dreaded Misc., non-category. (For the categories and stats relating to the top Technorati tags, see last week’s posting.)
Of course, all blogs can be categorised with more than one tag. Each tag represents a different facet of the item being described.
Simply, by adding this single level of supertags, Technorati’s very, very long alphabetical list becomes a simple, easy-to-use, multi-faceted taxonomy giving blogs a new dimension in findability … the multifaceted query.
Instead of random words shot in the dark, a multifaceted query enables users to find and to combine whole sets of tagged blogs at once in order to isolate what is most of interest to them. Even with the vast majority of people tagging privately as is now the case, the automatic sorting of tags under a set of top level supertags, as has been done in this Technorati pilot, adds value to a random alphabetical list without adding any significant cost for any of the stakeholders, whether readers, writers or service providers.
If groups of collaborative bloggers went further and decided to develop and share common classification terms, the benefits of multifaceted supertagging in terms of findability and intelligence gathering would be dramatically extended.
That is not to say that this analysis is the only (or even the best) categorisation of Technorati’s top tags. It is useful, though, in giving both some meaning and some critical appraisal of how users are tagging their blogs.
Tip 1: The key to getting started is first try to agree on some very general top level classifications.
Next week’s Blog will make some inferences about what Technorati users are thinking about from the pilot analysis.