New Feature on Fool.co.uk - Tagging

Fool.co.uk tagging is now in BETA from our article and podcast pages.
As with many sites, particularly those that have been round a while, an objective has been to move users around more than we are currently able to. When you have 3 diverse areas of a website, in our case content, discussion and products - this become a very clear challenge.

Initially, we worked with the excellent MadeByMany who came up with a plan to:

"Define a high level metadata framework – a binding layer of social content, editorial content, services and data that will provide a ‘relatedness’ engine and allow for emergent navigation."

We certainly liked the idea of this. Initially, we explored the feasibility of introducing Topics Maps. Dave, technical lead, has described Topic Maps thus:

" At a very simplified level, topic maps allow a topic to have a context based on the other topics it is associated with."

"With this contextual information a network (or map) can be derived and built. Applying the network to a web site enables many things."

"The first is the contextual information can be used to automatically tag a page; if the page is allowed to be accessed by search engines then the tags will be more relevant than generic static tags assigned to all pages of similar content and the tags will be updated over time, keeping them relevant."

"Another benefit of the network is that dynamic navigation is possible without the creators of content to set the links. This means both future as well as the usual past links can be made in any page."

"More benefits include the navigation options for the user being based on the context they are currently in, so the site can give the browser links that will allow for a more fluid navigation through content, increasing the tailored look and feel of the site."

We found a few sites that talk more about them:

Ontopia

TopicMap.com 

 
After much deliberation ultimately we decided to learn a few things from Topic Maps but to take the tagging route. The one concern for us was that Finance is a complicated area and therefore users generally want the information to be accurate. To negate this we have created a weighting on certain views that reflects the tags added by our journalists. Whilst user tagging is absolutely what we want this added layer of intervention should make the navigation side of things work smoother whilst tagging beds in.

We had originally built tagging as a proto-type, in order to get feedback from our user base we then decided it was polished enough to get tagging on to the site and see what happens.

So, here's a bit more about what we've built: 

 
What is Tagging?

Tagging is a way of organizing content organically and without a pre-determined structure. This doesn't mean there isn't any structure (we still have navigation) but it does mean that Fools can now describe our content and help us to organise it in a way that makes sense to YOU!

Sounds great but...

Where can I Tag?

At the moment users can tag:

Articles

Podcasts

How do I Tag?

Well, to begin, you need to be registered and logged-in. Once you are you will see a "Tag this content" box like this one on Home and Property article:

When adding tags, some things to remember:

• You can use the predictive Tag feature to help you choose a suitable Tag:

• You can't add more than one Tag at a time.
• It's best to use Capitals at the start of Tag, this makes your Tags easier to read when they appear.

What happens to my Tags?

Once your Tag is submitted it makes its way in to the Fool.co.uk Tagging database. You Tag then becomes part of Fool.co.uk's "organic navigation."

This "organic navigation system" emerges in various ways:

• Via Tag Clouds (a presentation of the most popular Tags for any one section) on Various Fool.co.uk pages:

• Tagging connects content and Tags together to create relevancy. One of the ways this is represented is by the Most Relevant/Most Recent content Tab found on Fool.co.uk Articles and Podcasts:

• You can Search Tags in order to find the content and products that you are looking for:

• By clicking a Tag from anywhere on the site will send you to the Fool.co.uk Tag Hub Page for that Tag (a page dedicated to a specific Tag that dynamically aggregates all Fool.co.uk Content and Fool.co.uk Products relevant to that Tag.)