It had been an idea of mine to try and create a Facebook app, maybe try and create a content tagging game of sorts, but Facebook is saturated by applications and well honestly, it’s one of the many things I just probably won’t get around to doing. But I was interested to see that MySpace have launched their developer platform using Google’s Open Social technology. MySpace is more open than Facebook, profiles can be viewed by anyone unless users actively make their profiles more private, so it opens up more scope for applications that use all the social data available.
As a tagging enthusiast I’ve been thinking it’s something missing from MySpace. In Web 2.0, social networks and tagging go hand in hand. I was thinking about what apps might be possible maybe something to do with the music section, tagging bands. But then I came up with the same old problem of why would anyone bother to do it?
I started thinking about why users use MySpace and I think rather than Facebooks uses of keeping in touch with friends, MySpace is much more about showing off and self promotion. Also attracting new friends and meeting people. This ties in well with tagging motivations, with the main motivations for tagging being to refind information or self promote. It would be good to build a tool that would allow users to tag their friends, tag new MySpace profiles/blogs they find and also to tag themselves. Whilst this would hopefully be of use to users, it would also be useful to researchers. An app of this sort would generate a lot of useful data about the types of tags users use and also what they like to tag. Would more users tag themselves as self promotion, bands they like or use it to organise their friends?
I think I want to change my PhD application and do this instead!
Web 2.0 research - tagging, social networks, folksonomies. 