Trapping Tags and Conversations - Information Trapping: Real-Time Research on the Web - page 190

. hey use mostly general words to describe the contents of the col-
lection. For instance, a page about bookmarks of Google resources
might be tagged Google Tools Bookmarks . So for once you can use
general searches to ind the topics you're looking for. If you're trying
to monitor a very general topic, like Yahoo or Google, you'll ind sites
that use tags invaluable.
. Resources using tags generally have visual displays of the tags being
used and how popular they are, which can help you in deciding which
words to use for their queries.
But while these are deinite advantages, there are also some disadvantages
to using tags as well.
. . .and the drawbacks
I suspect when tag sites become really popular, we'll have to watch out for
spammers trying to make sure their resources are listed with every con-
ceivable relevant keyword (and maybe even a few not so relevant). Because
you don't trap tags by date and multiple people can bookmark the same
resource, you sometimes see “waves” of a resource—several people book-
marking it over a multiple week period. So it can show up in your traps
over and over and over again. (Sometimes I use this as a benchmark of how
popular a resource is.)
In addition, because tags are geared toward very general searching, the
mechanisms for searching with them can sometimes seem woefully lim-
ited. For example, you can only search for one tag, and you can't exclude or
add tags to your search. So sometimes you'll ind that you're doing general
searches whether you want to or not.
tip
not every trapper is going to ind tags useful. if you're a medi-
cal student looking to keep up with professional/academic news
about a particular disease, photos in flickr are not going to help
you much. and if you're a legal analyst, you might not feel that
searching blogs with tags is going to offer you a lot. But at least
take a look at what your topic keywords are inding at these sites.
at worst, you will have spent a few minutes seeing how other
people use your preferred vocabulary. at best, you will have found
a couple new traps and gotten ideas for taking your search in a
different direction.