When talking to a fellow trendwatcher the other day, we were discussing Tag Clouds and Folksonomy basics. It wasn’t until then that I started thinking about the true impact of keywords and their power as tool to measure popularity. Well, the discussion soon led to another – the innocence of UGC and the impact of conscious keyword insertions vs. the impact of unconscious keyword insertion.
We can consider two different sources for keywords online. One is based on the users placing keywords to tag items and to populate articles according to evaluated relevance or for mapping purposes. Considered a pure UGC and Web 2.0 tool, this is broadly used online as tool for measuring the impact of events/brands/news/etc… online, as users create a relationship between the various Tags. Those tags will also be used by other users to generate interest. In a stresstetained world, we have little time for research and social bookmarking websites, based on conscious user input, as well as tag clouds, satisfy the need to be updated on what’s popular. Continue reading ‘Keyword Wars - Is the Long Tail massifying?’