New Technorati tag feature
March 6th, 2005It looks like Technorati will offer a enhanced ‘related’ tag feature this week:
“The relationships are automatically discerned by the software, analyzing the other tags used by people tagging the same set of pages and photos…There are two types of relationships the “related” tags help with. First, they suggest slightly divergent topics so you can browse off the path you were heading down. Second, they help get over the problem that people use different words to flag the same ideas; the “related” tags can help you find more sources that are directly on the path you were heading down. So they help with both digression and focus.”
This could be a big enhancement to open tagging systems, one in which could effect how we read tagged items. I haven’t been playing with Technorati tags at all (I favor the old favorites), but they sure are going full steam ahead with it and I’m thrilled about that.
I still think, however, that we need a system in which “the far right” (fully structured categorization schema) meets “the far left” (fully opened tagging). There are a few programmers that are working on this issue.