Collaborative tagging describes the process by which many users add metadata in the form of keywords to shared content. Recently, collaborative tagging has grown in popularity on the web, on sites that allow users to tag bookmarks, photographs and other content. In this paper we analyze the structure of collaborative tagging systems as well as their dynamical aspects. Specifically, we discovered regularities in user activity, tag frequencies, kinds of tags used, bursts of popularity in bookmarking and a remarkable stability in the relative proportions of tags within a given url. We also present a dynamical model of collaborative tagging that predicts these stable patterns and relates them to imitation and shared knowledge.
Among these research was a study by Golder and Huberman REF , from HP Labs, who analyzed the structure of collaborative tagging to discover the regularities in user activity, tag frequencies, the kind of tags used and bursts of popularity in bookmarked URLs in the del.icio.us system.
The Structure of Collaborative Tagging Systems
ArXiv
ArXiv
Computer Science