Tagalag – Tagging Taken to the Extreme

(Migrated weblog post from LSR)

For those people familiar with tagging and folksonomy, from where del.icio.us may be the most representative example, what I am about to post may no come as a surprise but for those folks who may not be familiar with those terms or who may not even have heard about TagCloud this is going to be something really interesting. Now, we all know that with offerings like del.icio.us and TagCloud, as an example, we get the opportunity to tag almost everything there is out there on the Internet. However, there was one single option for which we could not have the possibility of tagging.At least, till now. That option was e-mail. And that offering that changes everything is now called Tagalag.

Tagalag is a really impressive offering that allows you to tag people, yes, indeed, people, based on their e-mail addresses. So the way it works is that you can search for e-mail addresses or tags you are interested in and then add your own tags for your colleagues or friends. That way you get a chance to tag everyone of your e-mail contacts with whatever the keywords you may want to use and then after that if you are not happy with the results you can always revert back. The great thing about this kind of flexibility, and this is where the strong social networking component kicks in, is that you can change the tags that other people have used for you, if you are not happy with how they have described you. Yes, indeed, with this new offering you will be able to help build up your virtual network of e-mail addresses, i.e. people, based on your, and their own, input.

And this is an ideal option if you want to build some strong and lasting connections with your peers, because it allows you to stay close to them by being able to classify them but at the same time you can keep in constant contact with them by getting those tags updated back and forth. Pretty neat, I must say. So I had to try it out. And I did. And I love it! I logged in with my e-mail address and I got to tag already some of my colleagues. And after getting done with some of those tags I just didn’t notice how easy it is to actually work it out. But it gets better. Once you are logged in you get to enjoy a whole bunch of different features, such as a Tagalag box, which is what you can see now embedded in my weblog template, or you could use a Greasemonkey script that would allow you to integrate those tags with GMail or Yahoo! Mail. Indeed, that is right, you will always be in control, as long as your peers are ok with your tagging, but since they all seem to know you already for some time I doubt there would be any issues related to trust. There is already a certain level of trust in between all parties.

Tagalag is, indeed, a very useful offering and something that I am planning to continue using for quite some time since I do have plenty of e-mail addresses from colleagues and friends who I would love to keep and tag in a single place where they could also add their own input. That, folks, is tagging taken to the extreme and, even better, when you can search for people that meet a certain description based on those same tags. Have a look and search with the following example: IBMer blogger and you will see the options that will be coming through. Thus what are you waiting for now ? Go and tag me, so that I can then tag you back and / or update your already existing tag(s) about me.

Oh, by the way, did I mention that you can also log in with TypeKey. Yes, I know, great stuff !