The Structure of Collaborative Tagging Systems

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the structure and dynamics of collaborative tagging systems, revealing regular patterns in user activity and tag usage, and introduces a model explaining these phenomena through imitation and shared knowledge.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive analysis of the structural and dynamical properties of collaborative tagging systems, along with a predictive model of their stable patterns.

Findings

Regularities in user activity and tag frequencies

Stability in tag proportions for shared content

Bursts of popularity in bookmarking

Abstract

Collaborative tagging describes the process by which many users add metadata in the form of keywords to shared content. Recently, collaborative tagging has grown in popularity on the web, on sites that allow users to tag bookmarks, photographs and other content. In this paper we analyze the structure of collaborative tagging systems as well as their dynamical aspects. Specifically, we discovered regularities in user activity, tag frequencies, kinds of tags used, bursts of popularity in bookmarking and a remarkable stability in the relative proportions of tags within a given url. We also present a dynamical model of collaborative tagging that predicts these stable patterns and relates them to imitation and shared knowledge.