May 1, 2007 at 12:25 pm
Blogger Eliminated Categories; Should You?
I set up a Blogger-powered blog the other day to organize the 50+ responses I received to a roommate-wanted ad. I chose Blogger because - despite my fondness for Wordpress, Typepad and Vox - it remains the easiest and cheapest way to set up a limited-use blog.
NERD NOTE: Blogger is blog software, owned by Google. It produces blogs with the URL sampleblog.blogspot.com, so some people mistakenly refer to it as Blogspot. [Wikipedia on Blogger software].
I was surprised to see that Blogger had eliminated categories from the posting field, replacing categories with labels (or tags). A bit of research indicates this shift took place during the 2006 Google takeover.
This is important - a shift from a rigid taxonomy to a looser folksonomy - in arguably the world’s most used blogging software. It also serves as an introduction to the important concepts of tagging and folksonomy - bedrocks of the Web 2.0 movement.
Why is tagging important? Watch this short video Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us
So, what is a taxonomy?
A structured, “print-think” way of organizing content, based upon rigid classifications. [i.e. Movies > Capsule Reviews; News > Economic]. Not only can these categorizations be difficult for online editors to make, but they hinder the readers from finding content they might otherwise be interested in. (For example, a Cat Power DVD review could be filed under either music or movies, potentially obscuring it from readers.)
A folksonomy is an alternative …
Looser, “user-generated” categorizations of content, based on tags and keywords. These categorizations tend to be more free-flowing, and aid in the serendipity of finding content. Tags or keywords can be author-applied (as in the Blogger software), editor-applied, or anyone-applied (as in social bookmarking sites like del.ico.us).
[Wikipedia on folksonomy].
You may be familiar with tagging folksonomies from sites like Flickr, which allow users to browse and search images based on keywords.
Try browsing using tags on AAN’s Flickr account.
So, how do folksonomies and tagging apply to alt websites?
Imagine the alt website of the future. Instead of website categories that correspond to print sections (music, food, arts&entertainment); the website would be organized by keyword content; both editor- and user-applied. When reading a story on recent gay rights legislation; tags like [gayrights family legislation vermont divorce custody gay lesbian alternative children adoption] would offer a user many different options for continuing to read content that interested them. Clicking on ‘gayrights’ would display all stories on the site tagged with that keyword; most of which would be invisible to a reader under the current ‘taxonomy’ organization theme.
Suddenly, dusty website archives would be transformed - into accessible, relevant deep-well evergreen content. How - alternative!
What do you think?
This blog utilizes a modified folksonomy - you’ll see the ‘tag cloud’ labeled Topics to the right of this post. We’re hard at work on a redesign of AltWeeklies.com that will use a modified folksonomy - more on that later.
Do you think folksonomies work for your website? Will print taxonomies continue to be relevant as physical papers downsize and move content to the web? Or is tagging a fad?
Tags: content, folksonomy, structure, tagging, taxonomy
cresmer:
May 2, 2007 at 11:54 am
I find categories problematic. Every time I set up a new blog, and train a new blogger, I have to explain how to use the categories, and I feel like I never do a very good job, probably because I don’t really use them much myself when I read blogs. But they seem necessary somehow, because they help to organize the blog content.
I would love to experiment with different ways of organizing blog content. I don’t know how to use the tagging cloud. Can I do it on Typepad? Anybody know?
LauraFries.com:
May 2, 2007 at 3:52 pm
Yep, you can create a Category Cloud in Typepad.
Under Weblogs > Design > Content Selections, just check off “category cloud” under “category.” (De-select “category.”) You’ll then need to go to Weblogs > Design > Order Content to rearrange your page to put the category cloud wherever you’d like.
This is imperfect; you’re just changing the *display* of your categorization, vs. changing the categorization itself. (I would still recommend it for a Typepad blog - you can always change it back if you don’t like it. And categories make sense to people when they can see them on the site, vs. in a dropdown.)
And, while I think the topic of folksonomy vs. taxonomy is important for any kind of website, I think it’s especially important for an alt paper’s site, which typically has years worth of evergreen content (esp. movie & music features which in the age of Netflix & iTunes have increasing staying power) and deep-well content (archival reporting on topical interests such as environment, local politics or minority rights) which can continue to be relevant years after print publication.
I think the challenge for all of us is to figure out the best way to present this mass amount of information to our readers in a way that keeps them on the site and reading - that’s an engaged audience our talented ad staffs can connect with relevant advertisers, and that’s a picture for financial success.