Technorati tags just work

One thing I've had some difficulty in fully understanding is how the new Technorati tags work.

For instance, I'd regard this post as to do with weblogs. So based on how I understand the system, what I'd do is include this tag:

<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Weblogs" rel="tag">Weblogs</a>

The text in red is the key bit. It seems pretty simple, doesn't it? Yet I just haven't been able to figure out how it actually works. Indeed, I've not included any tag until a post I wrote yesterday about upholding standards in PR - and that was only because Steven Phenix sent me the actual text to insert for the tags to use.

So it's been a bit of a blank spot. Until now.

In looking through my visitor stats just now (I use StatCounter which gives detailed analyses, far more than TypePad's stats do), I noticed increasing numbers of visitors coming from Technorati tag links. These visits are to posts I've written over the past few weeks, none of which have I explicitly tagged.

Then it dawned on me. The tag system uses the categories you've set for your posts - you don't need to type in specific tags as your categories get tagged anyway.

I go to Technorati's tag help page - I should have done this before! - and I can see it's crystal clear:

If your blog software supports categories and RSS/Atom (like Movable Type, WordPress, TypePad, Blogware, Radio), just use the included category system and make sure you're publishing RSS/Atom and we'll automatically include your posts! Your categories will be read as tags.

If your blog software does not support those things, don't worry, you can still play. To add your post to a Technorati Tag page, all you have to do is "tag" your post by including a special link (like the one I mentioned above).

So as my blog is a TypePad blog, I need do nothing - the categories I set for each post become the tags. Only if your blog doesn't support categories (Blogger, for instance) do you need to manually add the tag texts. In all cases, you then need to ensure your post pings Technorati when you publish it (and this is how you do that with TypePad).

How easier could it be?

Comments

[Craig McGinty]

Must agree I was in exactly the same boat!!! When the penny dropped you could hear it rolling around my skull...
Regards
Craig

[Neville Hobson]

Thanks, Craig. Thank goodness I'm not the only one!

[Scott Kingery]

LOL...and I just got this today as well. A world wide epiphany is going on :) If you use Blogger or some other system that doesn't have categories, it's still simple to just add a link like you have at the top. And it can even point to somewhere else. The href = part isn't important, just rel ="tag" and the word you choose.

[Allan Jenkins]

I touched on this last week, deep in a post (http://allanjenkins.typepad.com/my_weblog/2005/01/tagging_and_fol.html) about Shelley Powers' tour de force on taxonomies.

My question was (and is): how will/should the category = tag relationship bound to affect how bloggers used categories? Until now, I have tried to be broad in my categorization, to aid the blog reader. But if category = tag, and if tags should be as specific as possible, then the smart thing to do would be to sharply increase the number of cats.

Thoughts?

[Allan Jenkins]

Sorry, that last was mangled by the grammar gremlin:

"My question was (and is): how will/should the category = tag relationship affect how bloggers use categories?"

[Neville Hobson]

Allan, that's a good (unmangled) question!

If the system works based on categories, then it will be a strong influencer on people to use categories if they don't now. If they want to be included, that is, in all the conversations that Technorati is tracking and thus increase their chances of making more connections.

This is where hosted services like TypePad are great because you don't need to do anything - your posts are automatically tagged. With services like Blogger that don't have categories, you have to manually include the tags. A pain, as it's easy to forget. Would that mean, then, that posts in Blogger blogs will not be included in conversation lists if they don't have the tags? I guess so.

Your point about increasing the number of categories is a good one. It's actually interesting, I think, because if you take TypePad as an example, one's blog comes with a set of pre-defined categories. I would imagine they are the most common ones, and the ones most people will use.

If you create your own categories (I've done that), they'll also get included in Technorati's 'conversations array.' But if no one else has the same categories, then your post would be a lonely voice until more people use similar categories.

But isn't that really the only way how the system will get more breadth and depth?

[Elizabeth Albrycht]

I feel a little torn about how the Technorati tags could force a homogenization of categories. If I want more readers, I have to choose what people are reading...but then that could end up with enormous, broad sets of information, which aren't helpful in the end. Also, I choose to use a smaller amount of broader categories vs. lots of specific ones. This might be a mistake ...I am not sure. I still find search to be the best way to find information.

However, I am fascinated by how tagging can identify emerging topics, maybe even systems of thought.

Lots to consider...this is a good discussion!

[Neville Hobson]

Homogenization - that was in my mind too, Elizabeth.

Would how people see the Technorati tag system mean they might tend to publish posts with categories that are aligned with the ones that get the most Technorati hits rather than ones they might initially think of? So we'd end up with a narrow categorization of the things people are talking about rather than expanding the topics.

Or is thinking that way a bit of a conundrum?

Allan asks similar questions in his post on his blog.

Indeed, lots to consider...