Next week a new website for Backpacking Queensland is due to go live and I think it is perhaps the most forward thinking “backpacking” website to come out in New Zealand and Australia (if not globally) with its’ reviews and ratings, inbounds RSS feed aggregation and tags. I have been honoured to be involved in this process from go to woe. Unfortunately, it only scrapes the surface of what is possible - but it is awesome nonetheless.

One of the key features of the new Backpacking Queensland site is the ability of users to tag the web pages as they go - and it is the reason for this post. That is, to explain some of the principals of tagging that are being applied to this project and to also layout further developments that should be undertaken in the future or applied to other projects that show the same willingness.

One of the most interesting posts I have ever seen on tagging was a comparison of Amazon and LibraryThing tags system by Tim Spalding
LibraryThing began on August 30, 2005 and instantly offered tagging. Three months later, Amazon introduced tags with much hype by Web 2.0 proponents. While tagging was becoming mainstream with sites like Del.icio.us, Amazon was huge and to many signalled the beginning of corporate sites adding tag functionality. But it never happened! In fact, currently LibraryThing has 10 times the tags as Amazon.

I have drawn a discussion list of what I think makes tags work:

1. Importance of critical mass

To do anything with tags you need lots of tags. In my article about What is Web 2.0 I introduce the concept of the Wisdom of Crowds. At it’s core is the recognition that the collective intelligence of the masses is captured for all to use, so classifications and therefore searches become richer, clearer and more satisfying.

Without a critical mass the effectiveness of tags are skewed by “opinion tags” - i.e. those like “good hostel” - there is even a risk that those items being tagged (in Backpacking Queenslands’ case the travel suppliers) corrupting the tags. There is obviously more questions than answers here (and it is unfortunate that I should have this as my first principle) such as how do we know when a page has aggregated sufficient tags to be tagged authoritatively? Or alternatively, what is the critical number of taggers a content item has to be exposed to, for meaningful tagging patterns to emerge

2. Tags are facilitating feature not simply just an add ons

Tagging should be easy and most importantly should be there for a purpose. In Backpacking Queensland a user can search important social media sites such as Flickr, You Tube, De.licio.us and Wikipedia for similar content with these tags. This is especially effective when we consider that travel decisions have one of the best fits for user generated content and peer reviews. Say, a user tags a page Brisbane and wants to see other traveller photos or videos of Brisbane to help make their travel plans they can easily retrieve these through the tagging of the pages on the Backpacking Queensland site.

Amazon has given little prominence to tags. Backpacking Queensland in contrast have put tags in the top right hand corner - one of the key positions for content. It is inevitable that there will always be conflict between commercial and basically “social” interests in most websites. On a retail site the most valuable space, where the reader’s eyes are first drawn, is most usually reserved for content that will generate the most revenue. Fortunately, Backpacking Queensland does not have a purely commercial interest, rather it is an information site driven by its’ members and therefore the tagging elements have been given pride of place which will hopefully gain wide usage and understanding.

Moreover, tagging is often used as a means of navigation, which on sites where there is good structured navigation this becomes less necessary and the tagging less effective. Consideration to the functionality of the tagging is essential. This could be an impediment to success on the Backpacking Queensland site as the navigation is well considered.

Building good quality search around tags (as we have done on the Backpacking Queensland website) is the first place to start. As one critic of Amazon says” I can use LibraryThing’s tags to find books I might like, to find others who have the same tastes in books I have, etc. It’ loads of fun, and it’s one of the things that makes LibraryThing so great. LibraryThing is much more user friendly with tags than Amazon is, so I tag everything in sight! LOL!”

3. Tagging is essentially a selfish act

Joshua Porter’s The del.icio.us lesson states that “personal value precedes network value,” or, rather the basic marketing rule of “what’s in it for me”. Users need an incentive to tag. The biggest being the need to organise for THEMSELVES a large collection of data. Users will not tag for the alturistic benefit of others. “Its’ as fun as straightening items at the supermarket. It’s not your stuff and it’s not your job” says Tim Spalding.

4. Yet tagging really kicks into gear when the personal blooms into social

When tagging content turns into an hours-long exploration of others’ web page categorisations tagging takes on a whole new level. Amazon (and unfortunately Backpacking Queensland) do not list their taggers. You need to click around a lot before the tags turn into people. (The failure is particularly surprising in light of Amazon’s clear grasp of social software. Amazon got “social” years before it was trendy.)

Tagging site should allow users to publish the lists of tags and equally other users to identify taggers with similar minds to see how they consider things. This particularly relevant in travel where recommendations and worth of mouth are important. If users feel like they are gaining something from the community (ideas on where to travel and so on) they will be more likely to feed the machine and tag themselves.

To dismiss people purely as selfish is wrong - look at the review sties where users go to great lengths to sing the praises of a product, or equally dismiss it. The answer can be found in usefulness - reviewers add reviews to a site if they themselves feel that the site is giving them good feedback. Users will tag a site if they feel that the tags are useful to themselves. Sites that send surveys as part of their customer review process should consider adding tag functionality at this stage.

So, there we have 4 principals of tagging: the importance of critical mass; the use of tags for a reason not because of a fad; the recognition that users tag pages for their own use not for the use of others; and that to make tagging really work a recognition that the personal agenda of individuals can be ratcheted into a social value. The Backpacking Queensland website goes live at the beginning of November and it will be interesting to see the tagging functionality take off and hopefully at some time in the future we may even get to develop it further, attach users to the tags, generate itineraries or other exported documents from the tags or even share the tags with other sites for integration - wouldn’t it be cool if the Calypso Hostel in Cairns listed their tags as seen on Backpacking Queensland on their own site!!

Tags: Backpacking Queensland, Tagging, Xebidy clients

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 at 8:57 am and is filed under Xebidy clients. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.