Remember the days when every piece of paper, music or photo you had, was organized in folders tucked into a drawer? How do you organize that material now?

In our November meeting, we were really excited to have our own Gene Smith speak to us about his book Tagging: People-Powered Metadata for the Social Web. I hadn’t had a chance to read the book until it was selected as one of the UX Book Club’s books of the month. I must say, I was amazed by how, in seven easy-to-read chapters I learned everything from the value of tagging and why users invest in tagging, to design and implementation of a tagging system.
Book club members had a great conversation with Gene covering the topic from all angles: from how tagging emerged, to tagging in terms of social medial. By the time the meeting wound up, everyone had a better appreciation of the evolution of information organization and how tagging helps us overcome the challenges faced with the information explosion in the current era.

Gene was kind enough to let me interview him personally regarding the book. We talked about tagging’s future, tagging and information architecture, and its role in content strategy. You can download and listen to the interview here

In summary, I very much agree with these words from one of the reviewers on Amazon.ca who posted a positive review of Gene’s book:
“Participating in a community, sharing our interests and contributing to the collective good are all fundamentally human motivations, Smith says, and social tagging systems tap into these. If you use tags now, this book will show you ways to juice your game, and will likely point you to new resources. If you don't use tags, this book explains how tagging can help, and how to get started. And if you're a web architect, Gene Smith walks you through the things you should consider when designing a tagging system.”

Thank you Gene Smith for writing such an amazing book on tagging!

Posted in on February 21, 2010

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