vanderwal.net

Popularity Overrated?

Matt McAlister brings up the problems of being popular. This is a subject I have been spending a fair amount of time thinking about the past few months. Matt has a statement that is at the core of my focus, "Popularity-driven models water down the value in those hard-to-find nuggets." I spend a lot of time with regular people talking to them about tagging and many of the newer web tools that are popular with the forward thinking web geek crowd. One of the biggest problems stated are around the popularity tools, like tag clouds and collective voting on news (e.g. digg, etc.).

The problems are related to popularity getting in the way of what they are seeking. The tag cloud is what gets noticed on pages, but most people think del.icio.us (or any other tool or service that uses tag clouds) is fully represented by the tag cloud. That is a huge problem as del.icio.us is a very broad tool, but a quick look at what is in a tag cloud or the new items on the front page has users thinking it is a very narrowly focussed social bookmarking tool that mostly attracts people with technical and web interests. This completely misses the communities that sit under that tag cloud. In popular tools most of the content and communities of interest are sitting below the tag cloud and are not represeted at all by the tag cloud.

Much of the value of human filtering, which is the capability of a social bookmarking tools (like del.icio.us, RawSugar, Shadows, and Yahoo's MyWeb 2) is in finding the those &#quot;hard-to-find nuggets" (as Matt states). The value in these tools is being able to follow certain people on specific subjects, which they bookmark and tag. Many of these tools are fairly good at this, but they must focus on the specific interests not just the person in that service. As the tools grow with more people using them the tools must scale to allow us to filter out the noise.

Popularity does not help filter, but it takes the fire hose of information and just focusses it. What we find with the popularity tools it that much of this information can be found elsewhere. Remember high school? Do the popular 10% represent the interests of the remaining 90%? Didn't think so. Now look at the popularity tools and interfaces and you begin to see the problems that the 95% of the web users have with these tools. They don't scale, they are tied to their interests that they celebrate as being popular. How do regular people fly below the tag cloud? How do regular people use a Digg or a memeorandum to find their interests (if these sites were that broad)? How do we (as web developers and designers) build for breadth and depths to surface that, which is lost in the regular web search engines?

Seeing how Yahoo's MyWeb 2 surfaces content that people in one's own community have found and bookmarked, it could be that tagging is one of the methods (MyWeb 2 is hands-down my favorite social bookmarking tool as it makes Yahoo Search the best search engine for me by a long shot because it focusses on my vocabulary and interests. Were my interests focussed on model railroading or knitting a tool along these lines would be far more valuble than any other tool. Finding new items, as well as the gems that are hidden, is quite tough on the web today and I don't see the popularity tools doing anything to fix this.

Does this mean that the popularity tools do not work? No, but their usage is limited.

Off to Hang at the Jersey Shore with Librarians

I am off to the New Jersey Library Association 2006 Conference to do a presentation on tagging and folksonomy. If you are there stop by and say hello. I am really looking forward to this event.

Now Blogging at Tagsonomy

Just because it was not difficult enough for you to follow everything I am writing, I am now starting to blog over at Tagsonomy, a group blog focussed on tagging (go figure). What will happen to tagging and folksonomy discussions here and over at Personal InfoCloud? They will continue, but may be syndicated. (Stop the snickering, there are things that are near posting shape for Personal InfoCloud and we have been a wee bit busy.)

CIO Magazine Gets Tagging and Folksonomy

CIO magazine has a wonderful article by Michael Fitzgerald on The Name Game: Tagging tools let users describe the world in their own terms as taxonomies become "folksonomies.". I get quoted in the piece, but aside from that the editorial is very good. Michael gets that putting information in each person's vocabulary is important. We loose so much information and having the means to pull it all back in and refind it is an incredible tool to have with in our reach.

Mr. Thackara Provides Fodder for Two Loose Thoughts

Things have been busy of late after a return from Vancouver, British Columbia from the IA Summit. It took a week to get through taxes stuff for a four month old company (as of January 1) and a large stack of e-mail (in which responding meant more e-mail).

Yesterday morning I had the pleasurable fortune to have breakfast with John Tackara of Doors of Perception fame. I really need to put two things out there that popped up in conversation that I need to think about more deeply.

Children today are not into the web tied to computers, but focus on their friends through the mobile voice and text messaging. I have been running into this comment quite a bit from Europeans, but increasingly from parents of teen and pre-teens in America. Having a computer is not a large interest for them, but they live in their mobiles as a means to connect, filter, share, convene, and stay tethered to those that matter to them, their friends. The quick 10 to 20 year scenario for this could mean the web is dead and is a technology that had an immense impact, but was a technology that was relatively short lived. Are our communication technologies trending through ever shorter life spans? This could bolster my thinking that the web is increasingly a temporary terminus for information to be shared and picked up and used in context in other media that is better situated within people's lives.

This leads us to context. I keep looking at much of the information that is on the web as being out of the proper use context for most people. We read information on the web, but the web is not the context in which we will make use of this information we find. The web as it has been traditionally built is marginally better than television, in that an address for a car lot flashed on the television screen is as usable as it is plastered on a web page. The address does us more good in our pocket, in driving (or mass transit) routes, in our mobile that is in our pocket, etc. than it does on the web page, but few web pages today get that clue.

I have also been thinking about tagging and particularly tagging in the folksonomy subset as the tags providing mental context to external information. We use the tags to pull back these bits of information or to aggregate this information when we pull on the digital threads that draw what is at the ends of these tag tethers closer to ourselves. A chunk of information or media out on the web is lacking context to our lives with out these tags. When we have needs, most always framed in the context of a need related to a subject we use tags related to that subject to draw back in that which we found or other people with similar vocabularies have found. These tags provide context for the few thousand chunks of information out of the billions that we have explicitly expressed interest in and have placed the context upon based on its relationship between the information or object and ourself.

Folksonomy in Physical Space

An example of folkonomy beyond the web. In a Flickr comment the person describes objects they found and strangers properly annotated. Folksonomy is not the content owner or creator tagging and annotating it is others.

This is quite apropos as Flickr, while not offering full tagging by others (if a photo is tagged orange, there is no reason (or way) for others to additionally tag the photo orange, which I wish would get fixed) Flickr does offer the ability for others to comment fully and add knowledge (or humor) to the photos. The string of comments, which this example is pulled is from a query Esther Dyson posted about the type of tree she photographed. Knowledge does not have to come from within but can come from around us as a collective.

SXSW Interactive and Austin BarCamp Overview

This year's SXSW was incredible. It started out a little overwhelming as I realized there were six distinct groups that I hang out with and they don't really intermix. But, this all worked out, as by Sunday I realized that there was enough time to spend time with each group. SXSW has always been the place I escape to so to have wonderful conversations and to hang with many like minds. This year was did not let me down, in fact there were many like minds.

The Tagging 2.0 panel I was on seemed to have gone well, based on the comments that followed. (My presentation with diagram will be posted in a week or so.)

BarCamp Austin

I went over to the BarCamp Austin and had a wonderful time for the hour or so I hung out there. I was a little late for Tara's "Marketing your project: Cluetrain style presentation, but I really enjoyed what I heard. I also got to finally meet Chris Messina and thank him for making the original BarCamp enjoyable and accessible for those of use that were attending virtually (he walked the laptop around when the people moved

Best Take Away Ever

My favorite part of SXSW Interactive this year was not only getting to meet Bruce Sterling (finally), but having him sign my copy (or one of them) of his Wired Magazine article on folksonomy and myself, ":Order Out of Chaos". I got a kick out of the "Dr. Folksonomy".

When you get a chance go grab the podcast of Bruce Sterling's closing remarks, which were stellar and moving.

Killer Digits for the Pocket or Hip

This year, not only did the official SXSW site have a wonderful service to for their pushing their schedule (only the things you want) to your mobile device, but there were other great tools used enforce. It seemed many people had logged into Dodgeball for Austin, a mobile service that lets you know where your friends are and lets you ping the service to share your location. This made connecting with your friends at the right party, restaurant, or bar really easy (I do not normally have a use for this at home). I also used Upcoming to track the events I had interest in and then push them to my phone so I had the time and location with me at all times.

This is a really great example of moving information that is of value out of the web and into our real lives. As a web developer I realized years ago that most of the information that is on the web is not really usable or reusable as it is not structured to be used in the place or context where it makes most sense. Most people do not live their lives on the web they live them in the real world. Information and media must be built with this understanding.

Tagsplosion and Sleep

SXSW Interactive has been quiet good so far. I was elated to see all of the people that turned out for the tagging panel yesterday and great follow-on questions.

The best thing was I got more than 8 hours of sleep last night. I have not had more than 5 for many days. I am really looking forward to what the added sleep will bring.

Upcoming Presentations and Conferences

Things have been a little busy around these parts, but activity and early Spring allergies will not keep me from letting you know that the road show is beginning again.

SXSW

I am heading off to SXSW Interactive to participate in Tagging 2.0 Panel where we will discuss growth, changes, and new ideas in the realm of tagging.

I will also be hanging out with the Web Standards Project (WaSP) people as we are having our WaSP Annual Meeting open to the public.

This year looks to have some killer content at SXSW, not that it has not in the past, but there are more things than ever that I am interested in attending. I certainly hope they found larger spaces this year. Usually the corridors are overly enticing, but the session rooms could pose a challenge this year. I am looking forward to hanging, chatting, learning, and recharging my web vibe.

IA Summit

I am headed to the IA Summit in Vancouver, British Columbia later in March. I am on the Wireframing Challenges in Modern Web Development panel, which I will be moderating Nathan Curtis, Livia Labate, Bill Scott, and Todd Warfel. We will be looking at the wireframing challenges and solutions of the current web.

I am also presenting my IA for Efficient Use and Reuse of Information. As the web 2.0 meme rings out we realize there is a greater need beyond that as people actually want to use and reuse the information in their own personal information workflows and not always in one web application. I will focus on granular content inventories as well as how to identify content objects for information reuse and set the structure of that information for better use and reuse.

I am incredibly happy to see that Kevin Chang (along with Jane Jao) are presenting Communicating with Comics as a panel as well as a full day workshop. This could be the hidden golden nugget at the IA Summit.

XTech

I will be heading to Amsterdam, Netherlands for XTech in May. I am presenting "Developing for the Personal InfoCloud" on Thursday May 18. I will be discussing the Model of Attraction and Come to Me Web as foundations to focus on building for personal use and reuse of digital information and objects.

Microlearning Conference 2006

I will be one of the keynote speakers at the Microlearning Conference in Innsbruck, Austria held on June 8-9, 2006.

More to Follow

There are a few more that will be added shortly. I am also keeping busy with in-house presentations on the Come to Me Web, Personal InfoCloud, Folksonomy, and other related topics. If you would have an interest in having me present at your conferece, workshop, or an in-house event please contact me.

Ma.Gnolia Review and Color Me Disapointed

I have been digging around Ma.gnolia since it became public and I am finding it missing a lot of things. It is closer to Yahoo! MyWeb2 than del.icio.us but not doing things as well. The design is nice to look at, but there is too much white space and it requires a lot of scrolling. Watching people use del.icio.us, MyWeb, and the many other social bookmarking tools I see scrolling inhibits finding information, as having bits of information in the same line of focus draws lines of connection for the person using the site and this is a great value for the person using the tool.

Rating Bookmarks and Retention Modes

The rating bookmarks is something people say they want, but it is not used to often. People only bookmark what they like, they do not bookmark things they have no interest in. In spending time talking to people using social bookmarking tools they have two or three retention modes: self-interest, others have interest whom the individual values that the person uses as a filter for their attention, and community tagging.

Private Bookmarks and Community

Ma.gnolia has two modes for privacy, on and off. MyWeb2 adds community, which is extremely valuable. MyWeb2 even needs refinement on this front to make that more granular to greatly help findability and valuable community filtering. Not including these social aspects leaves Ma.gnolia behind in the field with a lot of catching up to do.

API, Walled Garden, and In-site Findability

Lacking an API is a serious problem, but it may be in the site somewhere, but the information is really not easily found on the Ma.gnolia site. This seems to be a nice gesture that Ma.gnolia wants to be their own user community, but that is the thinking of two or four years ago. Communities are opening up and walled gardens are opening to let the information and beauty get discovered.

There is Good

All is not needing improvement. I love the beauty of the site. The broad folksonomy well, as the person tagging is clear, the object tagged is clear, and the tags are clear. The ability to pivot when using two of the objects to find the third. I do like the Ma.gnolia approach of marketing by using visible celebrities tagging on their site.

Saving Bookmarks and Wrap-up

Lastly, Ma.gnolia touts their saved pages, but many social bookmarking services provide this service (well, accept del.icio.us as it is missing this component). It seems Ma.gnolia was targeted as a del.icio.us alternative, but those are a dime a dozen. There is nothing new in Ma.gnolia and many things that could have been and should be done a lot better. As I read the Ma.gnolia site is sounds like it is believed to be fully baked at this point, which I deeply hope it is not as this should be a start of the project and quickly fix the project and listen to users.

Thomas Vander Wal on PodLeaders Podcast

I have been quite busy of late. Between some InfoCloud Solutions client work and some other things (including family).

I really need to pay attention to my blog a little bit as I do have things to post, like Thomas Vander Wal interviewed by Tom Raftery on PodLeaders podcast. The podcast covers the "come to me web", folksonomy, InfoClouds, and InfoCloud Solutions work. I wish I could talk more about my client work, but that will come.

This was recorded over a Skype connection with Tom sitting in Ireland. I was using my Apple iSight and it worked rather well. I have been enjoying Skype for chats with friends and business relations in Europe, I really like the quality as well as the price. But the thing that I really like is that it is really personal, much like a mobile phone, you are pretty much assured of getting the person you wish to talk with rather than some answering service or other interference.

I am back to working.

Bay Area Trip Jan 30 to Feb 1

A real quick note: I will be in the Bay Area Monday, January 30th through Wednesday, February 1st. Want to get together, please send me an e-mail.

Folksonomy Research Needs Cleaning Up

After getting flooded with e-mail yesterday about the Folksonomies: Tidying Up? in the January DLIB 2006 and yes I agree that by using Flickr as a base for much of their analysis they made a mess of their conclusions. Please go see Explaining and Showing Broad and Narrow Folksonomies to begin to get an understanding of why Flickr is not a great example of folksonomy. Showing tag distributions when tagging is limited by the tool (Flickr only permits one of each tag and does not allow identification of the person tagging, unless the API is used) is rather pointless. The central focus of a folksonomy is for personal refindability and derived from that point we get great value.

I would love to see this research redone with a better understanding of folksonomy and run the research on broad folksonomy tools like del.icio.us, Furl, Shadows, etc.

Folksonomy Presentation Posted

I have finally posted the folksonomy presentation from Online Information 2005 (1.3MB PDF) and provided a little write-up of the focus of the folksonomy presentation. If you have an interest, please go check it out.

Please note the bottom of the write-up discusses the delay in posting this. This is also not the most current version of this presentation. If you would like to find out more please write at the contact information here or over at InfoCloud Solutions.

A Year of Surfing Life

This was not the year I expected. This is a good thing. It was a year of personal and professional change, challenge, and growth. Sitting back and for a moment and looking at 2005 as it comes to a close I don't know that I could have ever planned this year. It could be the year I learned to surf life, in taking what is offered up and riding it to a place closer to one's dreams.

Personal Life Changes

It was a year that saw our extended family lose one member, which made life seem all that much more precious and every moment seem to be worth a lot more. It put a lot of things in perspective for me. I wanted more time quality time with my kid to watch him laugh, learn, and grow as well as be there for the tough times. I wanted home life to be more of a home, not just work away from the workplace. I wanted to finally get to put see the work I have been toiling at for the last four years come to life. At the end of this year I think I got to each of these or at least much closer.

Work Life Exposure

The press this year covering folksonomy and Personal InfoClouds was part of what enabled the change. Seeing folksonomy become something that made it into mainstream press was nice, but finding large businesses and cultural organization embrace the idea to improve their communication and information recovery has been even fantastic.

Seeing interest in folksonomy turn to look at the Model of Attraction and the InfoClouds was even more rewarding. This is the work I have been picking at for the last few years in my "spare time". I have been watching and working with organizations to adopt these models and frameworks to better build information resources that people could use more efficiently in their lives. Watching, talking to, and listening to people around me struggle to use information from the web in their own personal workflows has been one of the areas for opportunity for the work I have been doing.

From Dream to Making the Dream Work

Seeing the initial success that this work is having for those that are using it to frame their solutions and identify and solve the problems people have using information across devices and life's contexts has been rewarding. Now it is my job at InfoCloud Solutions, Inc. as the year comes to a close. The site for the company will get fleshed out in coming days and weeks. There are some interesting projects I am involved in through the company and have many more starting in the coming weeks and months.

Getting Around

This year was also one of travel, mostly for presentations, work, and work development. I have met some of the most wonderful people this year and I am looking forward to continuing the new friendships into the future. I have found a partial home for my ideas and work in many places around the United States and Europe and will be traveling again this coming year. The internet is a great connector for people of like minds as well as bringing those with problems and solutions together.

New Year Hopes

I am not one for the annual New Year's resolutions as I am one who likes to set out to make resolutions as they are needed, often every day, and not once a year. But I do hope that I continue to develop the relationships with those I have met this year as well as those whom I have known for longer. I am working to find time to update this site, Personal InfoCloud, and get InfoCloud Solutions site fully off the ground (those that said I should really focus on that early, were right as it is tough to get to when one's schedule is filling).

To each of you that stop by here and read, have a great New Year and please keep in touch.