Tagging: People-Powered Metadata for the Social Web

A quick easy read with a very straightforward, lucid presentation. The book was probably more valuable to me for the references to various sites and tools that I was not familiar with. Since I'm not a web designer, the most detailed chapter was lost on me. But to get an overall view of the design decisions to be made and the ways people use tagging, the book was very worthwhile.

A broad and useful introduction to tagging and how to design for it. Smith covers the field from top down, starting with the general concept of user-contributed metadata on the web and how it relates to centrally produced classification systems. He covers conditions for sensible deployment of tagging, user-experience issues, interface design and even the basics of implementing tagging systems. All in all, I think the book is a great introduction to what interaction designers need to know about tagging when they move into designing collaborative media.

I loved the straight forward way in which this book both talks about and illustrates on the topic of tagging

very helpful, specialized book that help me think through design of a tagging system for my content management system.

Have you ever wondered about tagging and metadata - how it really works? Then this is the book for you. It discusses what a tag is, how it can be used as metadata and/or as navigation, and what important choices has to be made if you want to design a successful system incorporating tags.

The book includes lots of references, not least to relevant published papers and books - some of which accessible via the web, I advice reading this with a computer handy.

Like most books in this vein it's probably going to be outdated, sooner or later. But my bet is on it being later. mostly because of it's discussion on how tagging, or user-generated metadata, differs from metadata derived from controlled systems like taxonomies.

The book is focused on how to build a tagging system - design choices as well as implementation details. If you're designing a tagging system for a web site, this is probably a good book for you. I was hoping for a more information theory-centric perspective, so I mostly skimmed through this book.

Good Intro on the subject of tags and tagging systems. Clear discussion of the benefits and the possible "gotcha's"