Ryan Joy (atxryan)

• @savetheclocktower Glad to see the book is out! Congrats! http://is.gd/J8R #

• Going tubing on the Guadalupe tomorrow. Taking a shuttle bus from our house to the river, but we *need* two more people. Any takers? #
• @lllevesque that’s a great bike, but did you see that javascript ‘detail view’ that trek.com uses? It’s gorgeous! #
• getting ready to head to New Braunfels to go tubin’ down the Guadalupe. #

• because my virtual self *also* needs a social network where it can interact with other virtual personas: http://www.myrl.com/ #

• hanging out w/ Austin web folk at the Gingerman. #
• @psuperfresh congratulations on the new portfolio site! #
• @cesart likewise, my friend! @BaldMan and I will be sure to barrage you w/ reminders for our July 8th meeting: http://tinyurl.com/5l42k8 #
• Well, that was disappointing. Literally offered crack in the 30 secs we stopped to view rental property. East Side, what they say is true. #

• Rethinking and reorganizing my workflow and the way I code in my local dev environment. #
• How do you view and/or use tagging? http://tinyurl.com/6evylj #
• @pat_ramsey congrats! I’ve used the wp-mobile plugin, but never the iwphone. I look forward to checking it out. #
• @jmeek I’ll be at the Gingerman at 6pm. Come by and hang out for a bit… http://webdesign.meetup.com/457/ #

I got into a discussion with coworkers last week that reminded me that everyone does not use websites in the same way, even power users and creators of technology. What surprised me most was that their use of the same feature was almost the exact opposite of mine. Our own assumptions informed our bias for or against certain use cases.

The discussion revolved around ‘tagging‘ as it relates to user generated content. I view tags as a predominantly user-centered feature. Whether I’m viewing pics on Flickr or reading someone’s blog, I’m likely to click on an associated tag because I want to see other content that user has tagged similarly. To me, this is first and foremost. Yes, I might want to see other content that other users have tagged with the same terms, but that is almost always a secondary concern. I don’t want to see others’ photos tagged ‘party’, nor do I want to read another person’s post tagged ‘javascript’.

In an informal poll, I found that about 50% of respondents view tags as primarily serving to aggregate similarly tagged content from many users. (Ok… there were really only 6 people involved in this discussion, but it was 3-3.) I.e. they go to Flickr, view all public tags, and browse photos of ‘Europe’ from different users. Or, they read an interesting blog post tagged ‘webdesign’ and want to view what other people have written about the same subject.

I almost never want to view all items tagged similarly by a community. In most cases, I am very much interested in content in the context of that user. I want to see their pictures because I know them or I enjoyed their others. I want to read their writing because I already trust them. The exception to this rule would probably be event context items. I.e. if someone tags something ‘BarCampAustin2008′, I’m likely to want to see the aggregated content from anyone who was at that event. Another exception, of course, would be sites that are themselves aggregators like Technorati.

I’m not saying that either usage is incorrect, but I think it has the potential to affect everything from the UI to the way tag relationships are stored in the database. It boils down to an 80/20 rule and I think the 80 is user-centric.

How do you view tagging? How do you use it when consuming content?

• I’m really digging the format and focus of Boston.com’s The Big Picture - http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/ #
• where did my weekend go? #
• @jeresig thanks for the Twitter Reply bookmarklet - http://tinyurl.com/6ldclj #

• There was an official, short-form debate between Obama & McCain campaigns this weekend on Twitter: http://tweetboards.com/pdfdebate08 #
• I’m not sure of the exact date, but it’s been a little over one year since I last smoked a cigarette. #
• engaging in a massive offensive against my desk. Papers and clutter are rather well entrenched, but I’ve strategically deployed receptacles. #
• HVAC on the fritz plus some sort of paint fumes a WFH afternoon make. #
• I’m going to hit up the Gingerman for pint night tonight. Anyone wanna join me, 6pm? The pint will be Sint Bernardus. #
• One of Muxtape’s params to retrieve MP3’s from S3, is the key/value pair “PLEASE: DO_NOT_STEAL_MUSIC” Good luck with that. #
• Congrats to all the Conjunctured Coworking guys on their new space! http://tinyurl.com/6s2yx7 #

• researching things to do while on vacation in Natal, Brazil. http://del.icio.us/atxryan/natalbrazil - I’m gonna go crazy if I can only relax #
• Three categories of ‘crazy’ on the bus this evening. #
• Yesterday I noticed a big spike in traffic from Canadian, French, and Portuguese IPs… now I can see that @jeanlucr is to thank for that. #

• @pat_ramsey happy aniversary! #
• @hayesdavis it redirects fine when I view it. What are you seeing? #
• What breaking news have you learned via Twitter first? http://tinyurl.com/5j6zsx #
• Inbox Zero is a war of attrition. I’ve won the latest battle. #
• @catcallen maybe this will work for your .fla editing needs? http://tinyurl.com/5mz6g9 #
• @lllevesque yay! wish Eric congratulations from me! #