A week ago, Feedster started an Anonymous tagging prototype system. With this system, your readers will be able to tag each of your blog’s entries. The idea is good and the principle seems to work. However, will this feature add something to all the blog readers’ experience? This is the true question to ask when you evaluate these tagging systems. Are they adding something to the experience of my readers/users? Or is the system just incorporating the system to follow the hype?

Are these tags, these keywords, really worth it? If yes, are they applicable to all classification systems?

Some tagging systems seem to work, and other does not. For example, I only use Del.icio.us to show interesting links to my readers. I do not really check what is bookmarked by other Del.icio.us users. There are just too many entries. The system is not convivial to search interesting stuff. I already subscribed to some tag’s feed and I always got the same stuff and lost my time to check at them. Now the only thing I do is to put other bloggers’ Del.icio.us account into my inbox. Then I subscribe to my inbox’s feed and get all the interesting stuff they bookmarked. The Technorati tagging system is also interesting, but limited. He suffers from the same problem: there are just too many things being tagged.

So… I’m questioning myself with this new “hype”. Meta-tags keywords failed… will Tags too? I do not know. I think that the concept is good for some application, but I doubt that they are useful for all things that have to be classified.

Technoratie: [Feedster] [tag] [tagging] [classification]