Internet Users and Tagging

The Pew Internet & American Life Project just published a report on tagging. Some very interesting findings from the report:

• A December 2006 survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project has found that 28% of internet users have tagged or categorized content online such as photos, news stories or blog posts. On a typical day online, 7% of internet users say they tag or categorize online content.
• Taggers look like classic early adopters of technology. They are more likely to be under age 40, and have higher levels of education and income.
• Taggers are considerably more likely to have broadband connections at home, rather than dial-up connections. Men and women are equally likely to be taggers, while online minorities are a bit more likely than whites to be taggers.
• The act of tagging is likely to be embraced by a more mainstream population in the future because many organizations are making it easier and easier to tag internet content.

More details on the demographics of taggers are provided below:


In his upcoming book, Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder,
Weinberger describes how radical it is for people to move away from hierarchical classifications. His prediction:

We'll also undoubtedly figure out how to intersect tags with social networks, so that the tags created by people we know and respect have more “weight” when we search for tagged items. In fact, by analyzing how various social groups use tags, we can do better at understanding how seemingly different worldviews map to one another.