Metadata, Tagging and Free Labour

Everyone that owns a Facebook account as most probably heard of the term "tagging", you may find yourself tagged in various images online, or decide to "like" someones photo. However Facebook isn't the only tagging service, our every move in constantly being tagged. Tagging is mainly popular within websites associated by Web 2.0, and can be the main reason the websites stay so busy. With tagging, your can mark your identity and let it be known to others that you was at or doing a certain thing.

The earlier stages of tagging began in 2003 with a website called Delicious, which allowed you to tag there bookmarks so it would be easier to get back to later on. But when Flickr allowed people to tag directly too their pictures it became very popular with many other websites.

The Internet and Google are constantly putting out new and updated information, Data that is easy to receive and research, however this then will give us a straight forward way of thinking about the world we live in today. 

In 1960 Ted Nelson created project Xanadu and coined the term Hypertext in 1963, his goal was to create a computer network which solved many social issues. However Ted was against markup codes and broken links, but in the much of the inspiration to create WWW was from Teds work. 

In 1991 a new creation called ARCHIE searched for Keywords file names, whilst Veronica allowed multiple word searches including words <and> and <or>. We now of course have Google, which came across as the "index" of the web, the key words you type in the search bar are then looked up in Google by the most popular ranked, these keywords will then link to a choice of websites you would like to look at. Rankings are created by us and our small actions which are all collected together. 

These small actions come together to create Meta-Data, which is easier to accumulate with electronic devices, it is alot easier with electronic devices to find a piece of information. When you do search a keyword, meta-date is what sits at the top of the page. You can then continue to open a browser and continue to the page source. Keyword Meta-Data was alot harder 10 years back, we are very lucky to be able to search anything we like so easily via Google. 

http://youtu.be/HXAstVP3-y0 <- The following video explains Meta-Data. 

Tagging is extremely well known on Facebook, people are constantly tagging themselves to pictures and statuses. It is very clear to us now to recognize and identify people. Tagging and linking also leads to higher rankings, we are constantly taking what we know and posting it online for others to learn. 

We all have a right to tag and upload the information that we know, take YouTube, alot of people use it as an information bank, you can also continue to comment on the videos conveying a freedom of speech and opinion. Also on Twitter you can now #hashtag, this is where you will decide a person your comments are linked too and can then continue to tag them by using the @ sign and writing there name.

All of this allows alot more people to get involved when collecting information and creating history. 

However by tagging everyone constantly knows your movement, okay at times it could be a good idea, for say if someone went missing you could see there last movement, however at the same time its extremely easy to be tracked, possibly by unwanted attention. I personally don't really like the idea of my every move being tracked, and do not often post what I am doing, or where I am on Facebook, I mean why do people need to know? 

Crowd sourcing is the idea that we are actually feeding search engines for free, giving them endless amounts of sources. You can of course get paid to do photography, however these days people are uploading images themselves for free, would you rather get images for free or pay hundreds? 

As we all know Networks contain an extremely vast amount of information, and we continue to find that information by using search engines. Our own human activity is what feeds these search engines, information that we have collected from our education and books. However, isn't this all free labour? 

Overall it seems that by collecting our own information, we have ourselves created an extremely big product.  I for one constantly use Google, whether its for help with work to research, or if I just have some silly curious questions on my mind. Just by writing these blogs, and I am feeding the web myself with more information. I feel that the things we do is what keeps the web together and helps keep the web easy to access.