Social Tagging, and Networking through Weblogs

A topic that has had my gears spinning for weeks now... the “tagging“ phenomenon is introducing us in real-time to a new set of technologies that, without a doubt, will revolutionize the way we work with the web. Tagging weblogs a powerful concept. We're all experts in something. We're all passionate about something... if you're like myself, you're passionate about any number of things at any time... things that keep you focused, things that keep you up at night. Well... last night was one of those nights, and after about 2 and a half hours of scribbling thoughts and ideas down, I could finally fall asleep.



I woke up early to organize these thoughts, and ended up with this rough outline. I will be working through it, and will enjoy a ring-side view of these technologies as they evolve and flourish. There are a number of concepts within this outline that should be covered, but haven't been filled out yet. I also used very esoteric examples, that should be abstracted a bit, so they make sense to non-programmer types.



I believe that it is the passions that make us human, that drive us to be successful (whatever that means to you). By sharing our interests, experiences, and expertise, we can turn our collective passions into a knowledge network that will expand our horizons far beyond anything we could ever imagine.



It's a work in progress, but for now at least, I would appreciate any insight on where to go with it.



Topics:

Taxonomy (wikipedia)
Folksonomy – Taxonomy through informal, subjective tagging (wikipedia) (del.icio.us)
Social Bookmarking (wikipedia)
del.icio.us, Flickr, 43Things, Technorati
Neural networks (wikipedia)
Blogosphere as a neural network – associations discovered by studying users’ usage patterns, and authors’ subject patterns
Unassociated content becomes weakly associated over any use, but strongly associated by either repeated use, or specifically related content, Example:
SITE 1: gaming:2, c#:5, asp.net:4, DNN:8
SITE 2: CSS:54 (expert who has written specific articles), C#:2, asp.net:8
Results:
Strong associations made between C# and asp.net
Weak associations made between gaming & asp.net, dnn & c#, CSS & c#
Very weak associations made between CSS & dnn, CSS & gaming
Scale-free networks (wikipedia)
Blog sites (via blogrolls, trackbacks, hyperlinks) are linked to each other in a scale-free network topology
Hubs by content-type, not necessarily by site
Ranking content sources
Specificity ex. Photoshop > Graphic Design > Design
Intra-domain content relationship ex. CSS à element positioning (finer detail)
Association
Inter-domain content relationship ex. CSS à XSLT
Repetition of associations between content types (repeated associations between gaming and programming)
Strong subject associations (2 content sources, otherwise unrelated, but centered on C# Generic Methods)
Discovering associations
Subject patterns (author patterns, 20% gaming, 70% .Net, 10% untagged)
Usage patterns (user navigation, moving from a site that’s 80% C# to a site that’s 30% C# indicates a C# association between those sites, and a preference toward C# for that particular user)
Discovering social relations through blogging
Gaining an audience
Friends & family, referrals
Physical marketing (url on business card, website(s), etc)
Trackbacks (wikipedia) from related posts on other weblogs
Original content that provides value to a community
Personally – humor, writing style, stories
Educationally – Research, theory, documentation
Discovering your niche
Don’t hunt for your niche. Post on what’s in your head right now. Patterns will appear given enough posts on your current experiences.
Be conscious of the subjects of your posts, keep good, clean categories and tag your content appropriately. Always let your posts determine your categories, not the other way around.
Natural biology of weblog networks
Darwinian (wikipedia) processes rule the environment. The environment is not just dynamic, but living.
Biology (wikipedia) of the Blogosphere
Protocol specifications (RSS, ATOM, etc)
Posts
Taxonomies
Behavioral biology: Evolution, diverse content, adaptation, user/site & site/site interactions
Ecology (wikipedia) of the Blogosphere
Behavioral
Community
Information flow
Global intelligence
Blogs enable physical collaboration by discovering associations previously not possible
Introductory or collaborative get-togethers (1 on 1, lunch etc.)
BOF (wikipedia) – “Birds of a Feather” get-togethers (random-sized groups discussing very specific subjects)
Nerd Dinners (site) – Broader subjects, bigger groups
The importance of passion
Pursue and post about your passions
Finding a livelihood that reflects your passions
Happiness – ripple effect
Positive energy, self-motivation
Organizations – getting involved
The more specific to your passion & niche, the more valuable your experience with the organization
Broad-scoped organizations result in weaker social networks