[tagging folksonomies]

Working on my presentation for the Reading Revolution seminar due to be given at Penguin headquarters on Tuesday (soooo soon!) has relight my thinking on tagging. As I was leafing through Facebook and contemplating how this site illustrates the community and collaborative spirit of contemporary literacies (i.e. transliteracy) I began to visit people's "stories" (well, feeds of their stories) rather than linking directly to people and noticed how they are tagging their status. I say "tagging" rather than narrating because the stories are more like bits of information which the reader pieces together to create a story or profile of the person/organisation. As an example, friend a "is loving his anonymous gifts" and friend b "is a pirate. Aaaarrrggghhh." These two phrases, seem to me, to work as identity or status tags, giving the reader an idea of what's going on rather than the *whole* (I mean in an entirely problematic postmodern critical kind of way) story. Does the (over)use of the copula "to be" signify anything about people's states; in perpetuum?

Facebook has the new tagging application so users can tag (describe) friends...I've started describing myself (is that ego-tagging?). What I'd like to know: is Facebook tagging evolving in ways similar to delicious (using oft' cited tags rather than creating new ones, working with the community, etc...). In other words, are there "standards" for Facebooking? I wonder if tagging is moving from user-centric preferences to community-centric?

xposted at Frontline Books