Stumbled onto Tagsurf today, while reading several weighty papers (Clay Shirky and Pietro Speroni) about the different ways people are trying to use tags, the value of tagclouds, and the way that tags associated with a post change (normalize, mature?) over time.

About Tagsurf

Tagsurf is a new type of online message board which uses tags to help organize subjects instead of threads or channels. Like Del.icio.us used the concept of tags to organize shared links, and Flickr used tags to organize and share photos, Tagsurf uses tags to help organize posts and messages between users. You can sign up for various alerts based on tags, so you can be notified of new messages instantly across a variety of mediums: IM, Chat and Email. Tagsurf is a hyper-forum: It allows you to communicate on a variety of levels, yet pulling only the messages that you feel are important.

Tagsurf is currently in development and we consider it in Alpha state. It's usable but it could break at any time. You've been warned.

The notification of tag-based forums via IM intrigues me. I have therefore started a thread there, called "Tags: Folders or Annotations", to pursue some of the points that Clay and P.S are touching upon. I tagged the thread with these tags, by the way: tagalicious tags tagsurf folksonomy fauxsonomy. So login, and let's see what a tag-based thread feels like.

What I started the thread with:

So the question is: are tags more of a mechanism for organization -- putting things into piles or folders -- or a way to annotate artifacts? Or is this distinction unhelpful?

I find myself creating tags on blog posts so that I can denote a thread of discussion over time -- like the 'hot memes' widget in the right margin at Get Real. And I seldom find myself tagging things in a way that would seem like a comment: like "nice post!".

I created an AIM notifier to ping me when something happens with the thread. Let's give it a go!