Wikis and Swikis and Blogs, Part 2

Want to watch a movie? Thanks to the web there are tens of thousands of videos to choose from rather than just the few thousand at Blockbuster. Want to listen to music? There are millions of songs available right now - without having to go to the record store. Looking for a good book? There are multitudes of titles at Amazon. Want to keep up on the news? There are millions of editorial opinions and news articles in the blogosphere not just the few dozens in today's local paper. Want to meet people? There are millions of people online to get to know - not just those in our address books.

So many choices! But with so many choices how are we to make decisions? Even before the internet expanded access to everything, we were feeling the weight of information overload. I recently read Reis and Trout's classic marketing book "Positioning" (which I didn't find as interesting as I thought I might). The book was written back in 1976 when the "Mailgram" was the latest technology destined to overtake the position of the telegram for fast delivery of information. But even writing back then they made the point that clear positioning is critical to reach an "overcommunicated society." And that was 1976, what about now?

If we already felt overwhelmed by chatter, how are we to manage the increasing volume? We're used to having our choices narrowed by professionals. We rely on them every day. We need newspaper editors to assign topics to their reporters and then decide which stories get headlines on the front page. We need cinemas to tell us about what's coming soon. We're used to finding books by going to the proper section of a bookstore and perusing the shelves. And it's very helpful that store managers decide which books should be displayed by cover and which should just show their spine.

In all these ways we rely on professionals to present us with sub-sets of options, trusting they're expertise in deciding what is most important. But what if all there were 100 times as many choices and they were all just "there" - uncategorized, un-editorialized, un-promoted? What if the newspaper were as thick as a set of encyclopedias with no alphabetization? The internet's massive proliferation of stuff has created exactly that dilemma.

Web 2.0 tools are being developed to help us to manage a vast ocean of choices. Before I review some of these tools let me encourage you not to feel overwhelmed. One defense for our overcommunicated minds is to ignore as much as possible and only deal with what we absolutely need to know. This is always an option, but it's not the best option. And it's not a viable option if you are engaged in the industry of marketing and communications. Besides, hidden deep in the long tail are things you might really enjoy, information you might find fascinating, knowledge that might improve your life, and even people you might not have ever otherwise met. So check out some of these tools, and discover how the long tail, however intimidating, can be your friend.

Perhaps the best example of Web 2.0 is del.icio.us. I'll spend most of this newsletter describing del.icio.us since it demonstrates all three criteria that make Web 2.0 sites what they are. The other sites I'll review differ mainly in the kinds of content they work with, but they all share - in one degree or another - these common traits.

At its core del.icio.us is simply an online bookmarking tool. Rather than using a browser's built-in "favorites" feature, favorite sites can be bookmarked on del.icio.us. There are three powerful distinctions between a browser's list and del.icio.us.

First, del.icio.us allows "tags" to be added to bookmarks. The use of tags is common to almost all Web 2.0 sites. Tags are single words used to describe and categorize content, in this case bookmarked pages. Personal tags as opposed to preconceived categories are a landmark trait of Web 2.0 sites.

Why tags? Tags are an alternative to hierarchical categorization. And alternatives are necessary because hierarchical categorization systems break down as the volume of content grows exponentially. For example, Yahoo! (or at least the original Yahoo!) used pre-defined categories to organize their database of websites. But their categories couldn't keep up with speed at which sites were being added to the web. Consider how many levels had to be navigated before getting to a helpful list of sites. Digging down three, four or even five levels to get to a helpful list of sites was not uncommon. Such search results may have a hundred or so sites on them. But what happens when that list of sites grew to three hundred sites and then three thousand? A list of thousands of sites is too much to digest, so new layers of categorization become necessary. The more levels the more refined the categories become and the greater specialization needed by directory editors. As the vast range of categories, sub-categories, sub-sub, and sub-sub-sub-sub categories increase, the system itself becomes less and less helpful.

Formal categorization systems like Yahoo! uses are referred to as taxonomies. Informal system of categorization, like the way individuals assign their own words (tags) to describe their bookmarks, are referred to as a folksonomies.

So the first difference between a browser's favorites menu and del.icio.us is that del.icio.us allows users to assign personal tags to bookmarks rather than assigning sites to hierarchical categories.

The second major difference is that del.icio.us, as a web based system, handles bookmarking and tagging collaboratively. Collaboration is another landmark of Web 2.0 sites. If del.icio.us was merely an alternative to using the browser's capability it would not be very exciting. But because it is a collaborative tool - and only because so many people use it - it becomes a powerful long tail discovery system. All the bookmarks and tags are combined together. In fact, the process of bookmarking a page in del.icio.us presents the popular tags other people have used to describe the same page (these tags can be adopted by simply clicking them). These tags can then be used in reverse. Clicking on one of these tags generates a search of all pages bookmarked with that tag, and the search results display the number of times each page has been bookmarked by other del.icio.us users. Viola! a new form of categorization generated from the use of and terms established by the community. Rather than an editor or an algorithm deciding what pages are most relevant, the community decides.

The third difference and yet another distinguishing characteristic of Web 2.0 sites is how tags and collaboration are used to rank content. Rather than editorial or mathematical determination, Web 2.0 tools use the popularity of tags among the community to establish ranking and categorization. The results are often displayed using an interface called tag clouds. Most Web 2.0 tools list out the related tags that have been used to describe content. But these lists are not displayed how you might think. Rather, they're listed in tag clouds that use type color and size to indicate the popularity of various alternative tags. The image to the right shows the results for the tag "collaboration" in del.icio.us. Other tags like "web2.0" "marketing" "longtail" and "tags" offer other associated terms to explore. And since the resulting site lists also show how many others have bookmarked each site, a degree of authority or relevancy is established.

Similar sites to del.icio.us: Furl.net