So continuing on from my earlier post about Backpacking Queensland (which you can read here) going live and “that’ email from Simon Gehert, I quote:

“Rarely have we seen something more obviously shoehorned into existing technology where it shouldn’t be. Take an open source CMS you didn’t develop complete with tag clouds, social network site links, unrelated blog headline feeds, google maps etc ,which was never intended for this purpose, add some crap interface design, a link to your site in the footer which says “Well made in New Zealand by Xebidy … and you have all the makings for a car crash of epic proportions.”

In my earlier post about the site I discussed the Silver Stripe content management system. One of things I said was that in the whole scheme of things Silver Stripe is not a very large Open Source project, which means that unfortunately at this stage a lot of the functionality such as tags, social bookmarks, RSS feeds, maps etc we have had to develop ourselves - plus there is not enough people using the Bootstrap interface yet. So I thought I would use this post to introduce you to some of this functionality and explain what it means and why we have chosen to use it in the Backpacking Queensland site:

Tags: I posted last month on the tags in Backpacking Queensland (read that post here) and my belief that in fact the tag system we have used in this site are more meaningful that many of the tags I have seen on other sites. The way they work is that users can add their own keywords to pages throughout the site as they travel the site to use to remind them of the pages. When an internal page is tagged this tag helps to build up the tag cloud which appears on the home page. The larger the font of the tags on the home page, then the more pages within the site that have been tagged with those tags. Tags, subsequently, provide an informal navigation structure created by the users. We added a little twist to the whole tagging concept by also then providing the user with links to You Tube for videos, Flickr for photos, Wikipedia for definitions, and del.icio.us for other pages across the Internet tagged the same. That means, if a user tags a page Cairns and then wants to see videos and images of Cairns from where they are on the Backpacking Queensland site the functionality is there.

Social network links: The social bookmarks facilitate users saving the Backpacking Queensland pages in popular bookmarking websites. Sites such as Digg and Del.icio.us are where users save their favourite web pages instead of saving them in their browsers. This is very pertinent for travellers who are never in the same Internet Cafe, or on the same computer, and so use these social bookmarking sites save pages they might want to go back to for booking or more information. By providing these links we think we are making it easier for the users, one less impediment to use, and therefore hopefully increasing users likelihood of returning to the Backpacking Queensland site. We included the ability to save a page to Facebook as well, because lets’ face it, everyone in this market uses Facebook.

Blog feeds: I have written and presented so many times before about the importance of user generated content. In the new Internet users are seeking information from their peers about the products they are consuming, whether they be travel products or otherwise. Reviews and ratings sites, forums, and blogs provide a user with a great deal of independent content to help them evaluate their options. In the same way as a traveller will talk to other travellers in the hostel common space so too do they use the Internet to research their travels. On the Backpacking Queensland website we have introduced links directly to blogs about the member products. Like the concept of linking the users to You Tube and Flickr for same tag images and videos, we believe that by providing this information on the Backpacking Queensland users will be able to get the independent feedback they require about the products without necessarily needing to go searching elsewhere. The travel stories are all received through our Xebidy Xefeed product where the feeds can be checked for relevancy and then fed back to the Backpacking Queensland website. It means that “unrelated” feeds do not appear. We have handed this completely over to the girls at Gate 7 to manage on a daily basis - although we do offer a complete Internet and social media monitoring service in house here, which you can find out more about here.

Google maps: I think the functionality is pretty intuitive here and don’t quite know what Mr Gehert is referring to when he says “… which was never intended for this purpose”. The maps show you where the member being shown on that page is, and an aggregating map shows where all the members in the area are. Rather than using stylised maps which are meaningless to a user who has not been to, say, Toowoomba, a Google map can be traversed and can show different views from street levels to satellite. On the Backpacking Queensland site we default to satellite maps for the aggregating views because they are fun and make the site look cool, and then use hybrid maps which combine the satellite map with streets for more purpose (unless the satellite view is not high enough density and we just use street view). The user can easily change these views. As many know mapping is something we take quite seriously at Xebidy and unfortunately it becomes a function of time and cost as to how much mapping functionality to include to a client. We are currently undertaking a very extensive development with another client that would see the maps being able to change the content on the page around them and also have a lot of information around the main focus of the map, for example, a hostel can show where supermarkets, ATM’s things to do etc are relative to them. Hopefully, we can extend Backpacking Queensland mapping in this direction at some point in the future.

There is lots more cool functionality in this site, and lots more to Mr Geherts’ email and I will introduce all this tomorrow - need to get on with some work now. As I am sure you can all see, loving the new Backpacking Queensland site though, well done guys.

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!!

Accessing your bookmarks from any computer was always a problem until the social bookmark sites such as De.licio.us and Digg.com came along. On these sites you simply create an account and save web pages to your account accessible from any website. But in practice you find that you end up saving lots and lots of web pages with no real rhyme or reason. Certainly not like the bookmarks in your browser, which are clearly labelled and highly organised into relevant categories.

I always thought the issue of bookmarks across multiple computers was a real problem, and although I have dumped lots of sites into Digg I hardly tag them with much thought. But, the other day I heard about Foxmarks via the Techcrunch blog. It seemed like the solution to all problems - a free plugin for Firefox that allowed you to synchronise your browser bookmarks across numerous computers. To make this product even more exciting Mitch Kapor (the guy who launched Lotus 123 in the 80’s) is heading it up and the stated plan is to use the intelligence of the collective masses bookmarks and ordering of these bookmarks by the user with some considered relevancy to create a human powered search engine. Perhaps this is the competitor to Google that everyone is waiting on with baited breath.

Recent interest in the launch of the Mahalo search engine, which is completely human powered, continues the debates over Google versus the rest of the world - which is ongoing and if Jimmy Wales (of Wikipedia) ever gets his human powered search engine off the ground it will only be even more heated. Those anti Google argue that the search results are not relevant enough to the search terms, that there are simply too many erroneous results and then there is the cheating of the results. Unfortunately, I don’t believe that purely human driven search engines can ever become a ‘real’ competitor to Google. There is a critical mass of results that need to be achieved before the search engine is usable and users very quickly lose interest in a search engine that does not have enough relevant results to provide them with what they are looking for - therefore, despite the numerous irrelevant results we are immediately drawn back to Google. I submitted Xebidy Strategic Design to Mahalo over 6 weeks ago and it still has not been catalogued - let alone many of the major serach terms that I deal with ever day in the travel industry.

To me Foxmarks provides the alternative. A human powered, automated search engine based on taxonomies created for your very own personal use and therefore with greater relevancy and consideration - unlike the folksonomies of the social bookmarking sites with are plagued with throw-away terms.

But is has been interesting watching the comments section on the Tech Crunch post as many people have bought up examples of other such products which have existed in the past or exist now. That is, cross computer bookmarks. The most obvious one is Google; first there is your personal page which allows you to create bookmarks neatly organised into categories, and then there is Google Browser Sync which is also a plugin for Firefox syncing bookmarks and even cookies if you want. Then there are a whole host of others such as Yoono, ULinkIt (which became Quiver), Smarky, and Hot Links - which dates back to 2000.

What is the difference? With the exception of Google there is a big difference. Firstly, being a plugin for Firefox Foxmarks will gain a much faster pickup than other similar offerings, and that pickup will only grow as the exponential growth of Firefox continues. Smarky is also a Firefox plugin, but in my opinion Foxmarks will outstrip it overnight because of the weight of the guys like Mitch Kapor and Todd Agulnick which will create the necessary marketing hype.

But is Foxmarks the angelic competitor to Google? No! Those that see the Google algorithm as purely a construct of Page Rank are missing a very important point. There are so many factors that go into this complicated algorithm, such as inward and outward links, traffic, onsite optimisation techniques such as keyword density, keyword positioning within paragraphs, image naming and so on and so on. If Google believes that Foxmarks creates a database of any relevance they will simply include some level of weighting for bookmarks in Browser Sync and Google personal pages - overcoming this critical mass is surely nigh impossible.

I am starting to get a few posts saved in Technorati - so this post is the beginning of me setting up a profile for Xebidy Strategic Design.

Technorati is a social bookmarking site where you can save all your favourite blog posts from around the blogoshpere. To understand the idea of social bookmarking sites and in particular, tagging, read my May article on What is Web 2.0?