Tags - Revolutionary or Just Folly?

Just another trend or something else?

Trends happen overnight! Some catch on fast \rand explode very quickly into our every day use.

Most of these trends you can ignore as silly folly\ror at the most fine amusement. Anyone remember\rpet rocks, Farrah Fawcett hairdos, or last year's \rkiller fashions?

Others, you have to pay more attention to: cell phones,\rdigital cameras, mini-sites, optin lists, or email.

Right now, there's another trend you should keep \ryour eye on: 'tags'.

What are tags? And why should you care about them?

Tags are a way of sorting and linking all that information\rin blogs and RSS Feeds. It groups together all the \rinformation on one particular subject.

It's a democratic 'search engine' for blogs.

Think of a 'tag' as a 'keyword' to be used in blogging \rand RSS Feeds (Feed tags are still in the works).

Tags have hit the radar lately because Technorati, which\rindexes 4.5 million blogs, started sorting blog posts by\rusing tags.

They have created a folksonomy, drawing tags from \rdifferent sources, mainly Flickr.com which sorts or \rgroups pictures and from del.icio.us -- where you \rcreate a tag when you bookmark a page.

Or if your blogging software has categories -- this will\rbe recognized by Technorati as a tag.

If you want to create a 'tag' it's very simple; just place \rthis code in your blog:

<*a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Computers" rel="tag">Computers<*/a> \r(remove asterisks in actual code)

and you will have created a tag for computers.

A tag makes it easier and faster to find information on \ryour favorite subject. It gives you a cross section of real \rviews and opinions floating in the ether.

There are some inherent problems in this system; will the\rposts grow so quickly and so large -- it's like 'finding a \rneedle in a haystack' or will you have to dig thru a lot of\rmuck to find the scattered diamonds. Or maybe a ranking\rsystem will be put in place but this goes against the \r'democratic code' of blogging.

Regardless, the traffic and marketing potential of 'tags' \rcould be very beneficial to those who use it to their advantage.

A marketer with a product to introduce or promote could\raggressively target tags as part of their advertising\rbudget. As blogging increases in popularity -- it's something\rto watch!

As a website owner -- tags could be a great source of \rtargeted traffic. And the keyword here is 'targeted'.

It's the kind of visitor you want coming to your site or blog.\rIt can only lead to a better quality visitor. Similar to\ra visitor coming from the major search engines. One that\ris really searching for your information.

The next big question, how will marketers exploit these\rtags to make a few bucks? Everyone knows that's coming!

Will we have a 'tag search engine' that can rival the quality\rof a Google or Yahoo? Or do we need one?

As with any new trend -- you never know how it will play out.

Some interesting questions have yet to be answered:

Tags are basically keywords for blogs -- but as everyone\rknows the quality of links to these tags are not all equal.\rWill someone step in and rank these or will they remain\rdemocratic?

Just how will tags work for building content or links to your\rsite? How will the search engines use these tags? How will\rmarketers and advertisers exploit the potential of all this\rcontent and the content's viewers?

Will we have tag-spamming? (Just what we need another form\rof spamming!) Someone flooding these tags with thousands of links\rto get traffic or sell a product.

Not to hype it too much but there's a real 'we're entering unknown territory' feeling with blogging and RSS lately. Heady days for those keeping a close watch on the events unfolding. There are countless applications probably already in the works for tags!

It could be the start of something big or it could just fizzle.

In any case -- keep your eyes peeled to that cursor! There's \rprobably a tag on the end of it!

This trend may just offer more than fine amusement.

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To Create a blog within minutes - visit this link: \rRSS Report and Create Blog Guide.\rCopyright ? 2005 Titus Hoskins of bizwaremagic.com. \rThis article may be freely distributed if this resource\rbox stays attached. Visit http://www.bizwaremagic.com\rfor more simple solutions to your online marketing tasks. \r----