Tech For Free!

Recently I was asked to explain what a tag is and how it works to a group of people that would be tweeting and writing articles for a blog. The following is my explanation:

To understand a tag you have to first understand what gets tagged.

Typically, “posts” are tagged.

Posts can be status updates (like Twitter), blog articles, and photo or video submissions.

A tag is a word assigned to a post (updates, articles, photos, or videos) and is used to label or flag the content of the post. Once assigned, the tag becomes a mechanism for searching and sorting.

A post (aka posting) can have multiple tags. This allows postings to be organized and sorted into multiple categories.

A hashtag is a combination of letters and numbers preceded by the # sign. These are typically determined by groups of people or event organizers. For example, the usage of the hashtag #ece was determined by Twitter users that were tweeting about Early Childhood Education. Use of a hashtag adopted by a group of users, helps other users within that group to quickly locate all posts related to that topic.

To best understand tags, I suggest visiting blogs and sites like Twitter and Flickr. Look closely at the content (usually at the beginning or end of a post) and you will see the tags. Usually indicated by the word “tags” or by the # sign. Many blogs also display popular tags on the right side of the page, or the bottom of the page as a word or tag cloud.

Notice on this site (when viewing a single article) that the tags are listed at the bottom of the page. Additionally, my site contains a tag cloud, which is available on the right side of the page under “Search by Tags.”  The tags are links and clicking them reveals all articles I’ve posted and tagged with that word.