The Multiply Blog

Nov 9, '06 6:54 PM
for everyone

Tagging, common among so-called "Web 2.0" services, is a feature that's been at the heart of Multiply for well over a year. Like the file attachment feature we mentioned a few days ago, it's a feature that sometimes gets overlooked. So let's have another look at tagging!

Tags are words (or very short phrases) that can be used to describe photos, video, blog entries -- any content you post to your Multiply site. For instance, the following photo album was tagged like so:

maplewood, new jersey, vacation, trees, water, autumn, walking

Note how each tag describes an aspect of what's in the photo album -- a vacation spent walking around Maplewood, New Jersey, where there was much water and many trees, made beautiful thanks to the season being autumn.

popular tags

There two major reasons you might want to tag your posts on Multiply:

Tags will make it easier for you to, at a later date, find specific posts you've made without looking through them one-by-one.
Tags also make it easier for others to find content they're interested in, both among your own posts and everything else posted in their network.

Tags are a nice alternative to folders, where every item must fit into one -- and only one -- strict category. Let a thousand tags bloom.

Bonus: If the people you know on Multiply are active tag users, you'll even find a well-populated "tag cloud" on the right side of the first page you see when signed in. This shows you what's popular among the people you know -- not among millions of strangers, like on other websites.

Tags: tags, featured feature

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14 Comments

toen wrote on Nov 10, '06

I am wondering how tag cloud (in multiply home) are being updated. Is that only representing tags from my network? Is that compiled from for last couple days of posts or from the whole posts already being made? Cheers.

rezashakiba wrote on Nov 10, '06, edited on Nov 10, '06

adding auto-fill feature to the Tags Field
enabling user to manage tags centrally: renaming, removing, find/replace, assign to, etc...
adding option to see the list of tags that are used before in my Network
adding a new tab named: My Tags
enabling Multiply to automatically add some tags(I call them Auto-tags or system tags) to each post such as: publish date, post type, etc
enabling user to add some type of hierarchy to the tags
enabling user to assign a list of tags to a user-defined tab
enabling mangers of a group to edit tags of entries posted by other members.

musesuse wrote on Nov 11, '06

Katrin

sinadam wrote on Nov 11, '06

i tag all my posts. I'm in love with tags. and i make my friends use tags for my convenience. tags are great! so people, start using tags. ;)

feiocious wrote on Nov 11, '06

rezashakiba said

Yes it is :) But I think there is still many good features related to the tags that could make Multiply more unique at this feature. Many of them discussed before on MUDS Group. Some examples to mention:

adding auto-fill feature to the Tags Field
enabling user to manage tags centrally: renaming, removing, find/replace, assign to, etc...
adding option to see the list of tags that are used before in my Network
adding a new tab named: My Tags
enabling Multiply to automatically add some tags(I call them Auto-tags or system tags) to each post such as: publish date, post type, etc
enabling user to add some type of hierarchy to the tags
enabling user to assign a list of tags to a user-defined tab
enabling mangers of a group to edit tags of entries posted by other members.

I already looooove multiply now. I'd love multiply much much much more if they'd have these:

- enabling user to manage tags centrally: renaming, removing, find/replace, assign to, etc...
- enabling Multiply to automatically add some tags(I call them Auto-tags or system tags) to each post such as: publish date, post type, etc
- enabling user to add some type of hierarchy to the tags

panthermartin wrote on Nov 12, '06

i dont really understand the tag cloud. are they examples of tags that have been used to access my material? and by whom. i would like to see who has accessed my material by using each tag. that would be cool. or were they only tags used by my network? i would like to know

rvincoletto wrote on Nov 12, '06

I'm using tags as my blog categories... and it works perfect!

barefootmeg wrote on Nov 12, '06

panthermartin said

i dont really understand the tag cloud. are they examples of tags that have been used to access my material?

i believe the tag cloud is made up of popular tags used by people in your network. (actually, i'm not sure if it goes by network or only contacts. i'm also not sure if the tag cloud changes based on your explore page settings, but this could be fairly easily tested to determine.)

so it doesn't show who has used which tags to find your stuff. it just shows which tags people (in your network or contact list) have been tagging their posts with.

barefootmeg wrote on Nov 12, '06

multiply said

Tags are a nice alternative to folders, where every item must fit into one -- and only one -- strict category. Let a thousand tags bloom.

i've been getting used to the tag idea ever since it was introduced and i think that this is one of the most important features of it.

for those of us that really like to have organized websites, rather than tucking things into folders, we can tuck them into multiple folders. so if my photo album has lots of pictures of my kids as well as pictures of our trip to san francisco, i don't have to flip a coin over which folder to put the album into (kids or san francisco). instead it can go into both.

but if you're still stuck on that *folder* idea, you can essentially make folders that use the tags. to get an idea of how to do this, check out my welcome message. the top half is links to some of my favorite groups. the bottom half has links to various posts i've made and they're sorted by topic or date.

they look like folders, but they were made using tags. :-)

supersaintly wrote on Nov 12, '06

it goes to show how important tags are really :) I tend to use several tags for each album I created.

It looked like it goes beyond your contacts, as I've had people I do not know visit my pages. It's a good thing because it helps people to find similar interest.

sisho wrote on Nov 12, '06

it's can make the comunication more easily... we can more share information about video, picture or.. anything. I hope the multiply have more future that can make user more happy :)

paramouthballs wrote on Nov 13, '06

"I'm lovin it"

jimmyykc wrote on Jan 5, '07

http://jimmyykc.multiply.com

a space that fulled of photo, video, music, friends and fun...

diehardh3k2 wrote on Aug 25, '07

wafakelz ako dyan.

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