Is there a diagram of how social tags work?

In  the next few weeks I'm giving three talks about transliteracy and folksonomy - a seminar for my colleagues at De Montfort University, a paper at Interfaces: English Studies and the Computer, Newcastle, 3/4 November, and a talk at the Leicester Cafe Scientifique, 8 November.

However, I'm getting a little worried because as part of my talk I want to give a simple visual guide to how social tagging works, and what I'd really like is to be able to show a nice plain diagram. However, I've hunted around and can't find anything like that, which seems rather odd. Surely someone somewhere has produced something like this? I'd much appreciate recommendations from anyone who knows of such a diagram.

Comments

[Hilary]

Any advances on the search for a diagram of social tagging?

[Sue Thomas]

Jeremy, interesting you should ask that. I've just come back from my second presentation and have my third next Tuesday. I can tell you it has been very difficult to find anything that is simple and clear for beginners who have probably never even used a blog.

In the first presentation, I decided to try out my stone soup idea (see http://writing.typepad.com/digital_life/2005/10/web_20_as_stone.html ) and to that end I used a simple illustration of a campfire cooking pot! My idea was to explain the story of stone soup and then use the image as a reminder that Web 2.0 is like a pot of many different ingredients. However, someone pointed out the next day that stone soup is essentially a con, which I guess is true, although with a positive spin it can be seen as an example of collaboration... anyway I have decided to drop the stone soup idea. I also demo'd Del.icio.us and had hoped to show Live Marks with it but the latter site wasn't working.

That talk was an hour long. Yesterday I had 20 minutes plus a showing of EPIC. This was a similar audience. I decided, again, not to use a diagram, but to look at the beast itself and just show the WDL blog, and Bloglines, and talk through their anatomies. But time was against me and I couldn't show all the functions I wanted to explain.

Next week, a different audience. People who come to the Cafe Scientifique are hugely varied but in Leicester most of them, as far as I can see, are postgrad students in computer science or other sciences. These are scarey people! But do they know about tagging? Probably most don't. Will I use a diagram? Haven't decided yet but I'll let you know.

In the meantime, have you found anything more? All the diagrams I've seen so far are far too dependent on substantial back-knowledge.

[Jeremy Douglass]

What diagram did you end up using, if any?

[Sue]

Thanks! Some interesting links from that, especially this one http://www.lanka.net/bcc/nachap10.html

[jhave]

unfortunately taggregator is offline
http://oddiophile.com/taggregator/index.php?tag=socialsoftware
i saw a ref to it here
http://rich.headsnet.com/archives/2005/01/10/60/

cheers
jhave