Loofah Warrior

Yesterday I was looking through the Amazon best seller list and I happened to check out the Bill O’Reilly book Culture Warrior.  As I looked down the page, past the editorial reviews, past the product details, I came across a section I had not noticed before.  The section was “Customers tagged this product with” followed by a list of tags. And what is the first tag on the list, loofah.  Loofah?  I cocked my head sideways like my dog does when I ask him a question. What does loofah have to do with Bill O’reilly? After a few seconds of dredging the pop culture sectors in my memory, I made the connection.  I couldn’t wait to see the other 250 tags.

Tags are tremendously usefully little things. Typically tags are used to describe, categorize, or associate things. Del.icio.us created a valuable business out of social bookmarks (tags).  But I think this falls into another category altogether. In this instance, Amazon users have used tags to not only categorize/describe the book, but also as a type of feed back (and as a type of social statement). It is the customer feed back equivalent of the ink blot. Is it useful? In the context of O’reilly’s book, not really. Aside from not enhancing the ability of other Amazon users to actually find O’reilly’s book, the tags paint a picture we all intuitively know; O’reilly is a controversial figure. But that is the point exactly.  Used in this this way tags paint a picture.      

What if your cellular phone service company allowed you to tag their products and services? What if you allowed your readers to tag your blog postings? What if news papers allowed you to tag their articles and editorial? The result would be raw, unfiltered and unpredictable. Would the results be useful ? Perhaps. Would the results be entertaining? Absolutely, but not for the faint of heart.

 

Comments

[christopher carfi]

k-fed's tags on amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Playing-Fire-Kevin-Federline/dp/tags-on-product/B000IU3YLY

[Sandesh Bhat]

Great Post

Regards
http://topsampleresume.com