noirExtreme

I started one of my firsts posts this year Beyond Laser Tag and Telephone Tag by writing "2005 will be the year of tagging". We did not have to wait very long to see that prediction come true.

There is a huge and growing appetite in the blogosphere (read this great overview on Headshift) for tools that would help tapping the mass of information that is created every day in new meaningful ways.

In the last few days I started thinking of the semantic web as a gigantic relational database.

A relational database is a collection of data items organized as a set of formally-described tables from which data can be accessed or reassembled in many different ways without having to reorganize the database tables.(...)
In addition to being relatively easy to create and access, a relational database has the important advantage of being easy to extend. After the original database creation, a new data category can be added without requiring that all existing applications be modified.
Source: searchdatabase.com

Web sites that provide content are like tables in a relational database. A blog is a table that contains posts, a forum is a table containing conversations, del.icio.us is a table of bookmarks, Flickr one of pictures, etc.
To be able to establish links between two tables in a relational database you need a common data element in each. Unfortunately, up until now websites in the semantic web did not have this common data element to enable relationships between them. Enter tags:

• del.icio.us, Furl, Spurl, FeedMarker, etc. apply tags to web pages (strictly speaking to bookmarks)
• Flickr associates tags with pictures
• Tags can be added to blog posts that Technorati can use
• Ed Takema suggests using tags to add structure to Wiki's
• And many more to come. I bet that the tagging craze is just beginning and soon you will find tags everywhere.

And now comes the interesting bit. Since tags are getting applied to different types of contents we do now have the data element that can be used to link content from various source as in a relational database. Two new classes of applications are just emerging around that concept:

1. Information aggregators (or tentatively "taggregators") that use tags to link content from various sources in new and hopefully meaningful ways. Taggregator is a prototype of such an app. that links del.icio.us bookmarks with Flickr pictures. As I mentioned already, Technorati links Flickr, del.icio.us and blogs. Search for tag:opensource to retrieve pictures, blog posts and web pages on that specific topic.
2. Tag management tools to help manage personal tag usage (rename, regroup, link, split, etc.) but also get an understanding of how others use tags to label content in order to be able to align or differentiate one's tagging strategy. Some are already working on it.

These brand new classes of applications will be very hot in the coming months.