Tags Are the New Bookmarks

To anyone who has just figured out that you can "bookmark" your favorite pages on the web, I have bad news. Bookmarks are passe. They are so last century. Now it's all about the tags. What are tags? Well, the short answer is that they are user generated keywords that describe things the user has found on the internet that they like. So if you like, for example, a really interesting blog on engagism, you would simply go the site and tag it with words that YOU would likely remember relate to engagism (such as cool, hip, edgy and brilliant -- just some ideas). All you need to do is go to a site like Del.icio.us and download a couple buttons that will let you tag merrily away.

Why is this so important? Well, like all the other UGC stuff out there, tagging is growing. According to a recent report from the Pew Internet and the American Life Project, almost one in three Web users organizes the materials they care about on the Internet with tags. That number is likely to grow in coming years as users take more control in how they access and organize information. And in true Web 2.0 fashion, users can share their tags with others, creating a whole new system for searching the Internet. So, if you tag a really cool picture of "tropical fish" (sorry, my mind is still on my Polynesian vacation), you can search on sites that enable tagging, like Del.icio.us and Flickr, for other "tropical fish" tags.

All this user generated content makes it sound a little like the inmates are taking over the asylum -- and now they're taking over the search tools as well!