28% of Web Users Tag Content Online

A quick tip from Henrik Olsen, GUUUI (Interaction Designers Coffebreak):

28% of internet users have tagged or categorized content online

Folksonomies are spreading. A survey from December 2006 has found that 28% of internet users in the US have tagged or categorized content online, such as photos, news stories or blog posts. On a typical day, 7% of the users say they tag or categorize online content.

Taggers are classic early adopters. They are likely to be under 40 and have higher levels of education and income.

The survey was carried out by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Report on the tagging survey 

Actually it’s a very interesting report. Some interesting findings:

  • Almost the same fraction of men and women are tagging content online — spread between men/women are only 29%/27%.
  • The guy that invented the decimal system (used to categorize books) was Melvin Dewey — which might explain why Microsoft’s alternative search engine is named Ms Dewey.
  • Dewey related “pets” in the technology category (under 600 technology > 630 agriculture and related technologies > 636 animal husbandry > 636.7 dogs). Not necessarily a logical place to search for it today unless you fully understand the Dewey decimal number system.

Also the report includes an interview with David Weinberger with some brilliant example on how tagging adds value to websites and web users as a whole:

There’s an altruistic appeal to tagging as well. Tagging at public sites can give you a sense that
you’re adding to a shared stream of knowledge. At del.icio.us, or other such sites, tag a page
“robotics” and you know that it’s automatically added to the list of pages tagged that way, so
anyone else interested in that topic can find it.

Q: So, there are benefits beyond the individual.

Weinberger: Absolutely. Maybe the most interesting thing about tagging is that we now have
millions and millions of people who are saying, in public, what they think pages and images are
about. That’s crucial information that we can use to pull together new ideas and information
across the endless sea we’ve created for ourselves.

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One Response to “28% of Web Users Tag Content Online”

  1. Jens Meiert Says:

    I immediately bet that these numbers are just plain wrong. Considering that incredibly many people still think Yahoo or Google are “the Internet”, and that technology makes many things (unnecessarily) hard to use, every third person (even US wide) tags stuff? Nope. Take my annual income.