Tagging has arisen as way to enable users to contribute to a loose taxonomy characterizing web pages, pictures, products and other things. We propose tagging people in order to help individuals keep track of each other while contributing to a loose characterization of their friends and colleagues. “Fringe Contacts” is a reference system designed to test whether peopletagging is a viable and useful approach. It includes both user and programmatic interfaces to tagging functions. The latter is included to enable integration with other collaborative applications such as email or instant messaging. Some client plugins have been developed, and preliminary usage data are encouraging. We think that some characteristics of the enterprise — a clear notion of identity, “professional” environment, and existing need to classify people by their skills and projects — may be necessary ingredients for people-tagging to work.
By: Stephen Farrell; Tessa Lau
Published in: RJ10384 in 2006
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