Tagging is the process by which online content is labeled with a description of the content, or at least a description that means something to the user. For example, when a user opens an account on a social networking site, such as Bebo, they can upload videos and pictures. They then have the option to tag them - for example, a holiday photo may be labeled 'the beach'.
When 'the beach' is entered into a search engine or the internal search function in the site itself, the picture will be displayed in the search engine results page. This tagging system makes it easier to organize information on the site and thus easier for users to navigate through the site.
There are many different types of tagging. Certain sites have distinct systems in place; Google's tagging system, for example, is called 'bookmark', whereas some other sites may prompt users to label content without making the process of tagging, and its consequences, explicit.
David Weinberger of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, told Pew that tagging was becoming increasingly important for the web, stating:
"Tagging lets us organise the vastness of the web, and even our e-mail, as Gmail has shown, using the categories that matter to us as individuals."
Mr Weinberger also stated that tagging is a classic example of how the web is enabling the bottom-up building of categories, rather than having such systems of organization imposed on users from above.
However, tagging systems have come under some criticism from people who feel that the process delivers ambiguous results, since average internet users will tag their online content in different ways. This contradicts the main aim of tagging - the better organization of sites - as stories or photos that are similar in content may be tagged very differently.
Nevertheless, the benefits to tagging on the internet are still vast, particularly as social networking sites flourish in the Web 2.0 climate. Indeed, as Mr Weinberger told Pew Internet:
"Tagging allows social groups to form around similarities of interests and points of view. If you're using the same tags as I do, we probably share some deep commonalities."
