Trail patterns in social tagging systems: Role of tags as digital pheromones

Thomas George Kannampallil; Wai Tat Fu

doi:10.1007/978-3-642-02812-0_20

Trail patterns in social tagging systems: Role of tags as digital pheromones

Thomas George Kannampallil, Wai Tat Fu

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › peer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

The popularity of social information systems has been driven by their ability to help users manage, organize and share online resources. Though the research exploring the use of tags is relatively new, two things are widely acknowledged in the research community: (a) tags act as a medium for social collaboration, navigation and browsing and (b) an overall stable equilibrium exists among tag patterns due to the social nature of the tagging process. But there is very little agreement on what causes these stable patterns. In this paper, we take an evolutionary perspective to understand the process of tagging to investigate whether tags act as "way finders" or digital pheromones in social tagging systems. We investigate the existence of tag trails based on a semantic similarity measure among existing tags. We found that over 50% of the resources we evaluated exhibited strong trail patterns. The implications of these patterns for the design and management of social tagging systems is discussed.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Foundations of Augmented Cognition
Subtitle of host publication	Neuroergonomics and Operational Neuroscience - 5th International Conference, FAC 2009, Held as Part of HCI International 2009, Proceedings
Pages	165-174
Number of pages	10
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02812-0_20
State	Published - 2009
Event	5th International Conference on Foundations of Augmented Cognition, FAC 2009, Held as Part of HCI International 2009 - San Diego, CA, United States Duration: Jul 19 2009 → Jul 24 2009

Publication series

Name	Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume	5638 LNAI
ISSN (Print)	0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)	1611-3349

Conference

Conference	5th International Conference on Foundations of Augmented Cognition, FAC 2009, Held as Part of HCI International 2009
Country/Territory	United States
City	San Diego, CA
Period	07/19/09 → 07/24/09

Keywords

Pheromones
Social Tagging Systems (STS)
Stigmergy
Web 2.0

Access to Document

10.1007/978-3-642-02812-0_20

Cite this

Kannampallil, T. G., & Fu, W. T. (2009). Trail patterns in social tagging systems: Role of tags as digital pheromones. In Foundations of Augmented Cognition: Neuroergonomics and Operational Neuroscience - 5th International Conference, FAC 2009, Held as Part of HCI International 2009, Proceedings (pp. 165-174). (Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics); Vol. 5638 LNAI). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02812-0_20

Kannampallil, Thomas George ; Fu, Wai Tat. / Trail patterns in social tagging systems : Role of tags as digital pheromones. Foundations of Augmented Cognition: Neuroergonomics and Operational Neuroscience - 5th International Conference, FAC 2009, Held as Part of HCI International 2009, Proceedings. 2009. pp. 165-174 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)).

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abstract = "The popularity of social information systems has been driven by their ability to help users manage, organize and share online resources. Though the research exploring the use of tags is relatively new, two things are widely acknowledged in the research community: (a) tags act as a medium for social collaboration, navigation and browsing and (b) an overall stable equilibrium exists among tag patterns due to the social nature of the tagging process. But there is very little agreement on what causes these stable patterns. In this paper, we take an evolutionary perspective to understand the process of tagging to investigate whether tags act as {"}way finders{"} or digital pheromones in social tagging systems. We investigate the existence of tag trails based on a semantic similarity measure among existing tags. We found that over 50% of the resources we evaluated exhibited strong trail patterns. The implications of these patterns for the design and management of social tagging systems is discussed.",

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Kannampallil, TG & Fu, WT 2009, Trail patterns in social tagging systems: Role of tags as digital pheromones. in Foundations of Augmented Cognition: Neuroergonomics and Operational Neuroscience - 5th International Conference, FAC 2009, Held as Part of HCI International 2009, Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), vol. 5638 LNAI, pp. 165-174, 5th International Conference on Foundations of Augmented Cognition, FAC 2009, Held as Part of HCI International 2009, San Diego, CA, United States, 07/19/09. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02812-0_20

Trail patterns in social tagging systems : Role of tags as digital pheromones. / Kannampallil, Thomas George; Fu, Wai Tat.

Foundations of Augmented Cognition: Neuroergonomics and Operational Neuroscience - 5th International Conference, FAC 2009, Held as Part of HCI International 2009, Proceedings. 2009. p. 165-174 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics); Vol. 5638 LNAI).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › peer-review

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Kannampallil TG, Fu WT. Trail patterns in social tagging systems: Role of tags as digital pheromones. In Foundations of Augmented Cognition: Neuroergonomics and Operational Neuroscience - 5th International Conference, FAC 2009, Held as Part of HCI International 2009, Proceedings. 2009. p. 165-174. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)). doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-02812-0_20

Trail patterns in social tagging systems: Role of tags as digital pheromones

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