Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.
Today?’s podcast is a continuation of the media coverage of the Voices That Matter Web Design Conference that took place in Nashville early last month.
For today?’s podcast, I have the pleasure to be interviewing Gene Smith, Principal at nForm.ca. Gene is the author of the book “Tagging”: People-powered Metadata for the Social Web.
I asked Gene to summarize his session on the topic of Tagging and to share his perspective on the value proposition and the differentiation from the Semantic Web. Check out the five minute interview with Gene Smith on the WOW Technology Minute website.
Gene?’s book links and a summary of the business value.
Today?’s sponsor of the WOW Technology Minute is sponsored by Concentric offering small business and shared web hosting solutions.
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To register for this FREE one hour Webinar contact: robert(AT)joinwow.org
Transcript of Tagging with Gene Smith
BILL CULLIFER: Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW), and the WOW Technology Minute here at the Voices That Matter Conference in Nashville, 2008. I have the pleasure to be interviewing and introducing Gene Smith, the principal for nForm User Experiences, a user-experience consultant, speaking here at the conference on tagging. And you?’ve recently published a book–
GENE SMITH: That?’s right.
BILL: On the topic of tagging. Gene, for the listeners of this podcast, those generalists, webmasters, designers, developers, Web professionals, if you will, within the WOW community listening and viewing this podcast, can you summarize the value proposition from a tagging perspective and summarize your session today?
GENE: Sure. So for people who manage websites tagging is a really important way for people to be able to find your material again, your content, find their way back to your stuff when they come across it online. There?’s lots of different ways they can do that. A popular social-bookmarking site is called del.icio.us. You can go to www.delicious.com for more about that. When people see the link in delicious.com they can add some keywords to it, those keywords are tags and tags help people explore del.icio.us, look at things that are popular and understand what other people are finding and learning about. So for webmasters I think the most important thing is to make it easy for people to bookmark your stuff. Lots of people have a little link they embed on their site they call “save on del.icio.us” or “save on StumbleUpon” or other sites that let people save and share links and tag on. And that?’s a great way to start. Basically the value proposition of tagging is helping people find you, find your information.
BILL: I appreciate that. You made a comment about the differentiation between tagging and Semantic Web. Can you address that? The webmasters of the world, they?’ve heard Semantic Web, they generally understand it, they?’ve heard individuals like Tim Berners Lee, who obviously is leading the pack on Semantic Web, can you address that? What is your perspective on that topic?
GENE: Well, I?’m really interested in what works for people. So I?’m less interested in philosophically what the Semantic Web is, or philosophically what Web 2.0 is. I?’m interested in what helps people find things more easily, what helps companies or businesses get their content out there in a more successful way. So typically the Web 2.0 tagging world is a very bottom-up, user-generated, user-driven world where people are contributing videos or adding photos or tagging links or other things. The Semantic Web world is a little bit more top-down structure, people building ontologies and knowledge from works and organizing knowledge through those. What I talked about in my session today was a lot about how people are mixing up those methods to do new things, to find ways to help users keep track of their information more effectively, help them navigate a website in a little bit better way, help a company build a navigation system that actually scales without needing tweaking every day. So the people I really look to are, I look a little bit to the academic research, but really to entrepreneurs, start-ups, software companies who are trying to solve real problems using these technologies. They?’re doing the innovative stuff and they don?’t care about philosophically what the Semantic Web is or what Web 2.0 is. What they care about is what works. And so that?’s the kind of stuff I talked about in my session today and that?’s the kind of stuff I find inspiring.
BILL: Fair enough. Thank you for that response. Gene, a little bit about the book, it?’s called TAGGING.
GENE: That?’s right.
BILL: And it?’s available from Pearson Publishing.
GENE: Yeah.
BILL: And any other location where they might be able to find that?
GENE: Absolutely. Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, if you?’re in Canada, Chapters.ca or Indigo.ca, and probably any other online bookstore around the world would be able to get it for you.
BILL: Excellent.
GENE: And the great thing about it is if you just go and search on Amazon for “tagging”, it?’ll be the first result.
BILL: Terrific. Great. Thank you so much Gene for your time.
GENE: Thanks Bill.
BILL: Bill Cullifer here for the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) at the Voices That Matter Conference. Thanks for your time Gene.
GENE: Great, thank you.