Calm down, mister. I DO believe in tags. And so should you. This blog is still a non-entity, but Technorati already brought people here, thanks to my tags. The “Dyslexia” one in my first post actually earned me a permanent link.
Tags do what every TV exercise machine should do: They work pretty well. But as in Abs of Steel, there’s a catch.
Tags are not playing stuff. Generic ones don’t help. Nothing stupider than tagging all your posts “internet”.
Funny tags have two effects:
1 - Nobody searches for them. Your tag will be unique and unreachable buried in a tag cloud. If one can’t see your tag, it doesn’t exist. Also, nobody types funny tags like “deadparrotonastick”.
2 - Funny tags mislead people. People don’t like to be misled. As much as I agree, a post about Paris Hilton should not be tagged with “STD agent”.
I have a personal favourite, a post in my personal blog, with title and tags “putas, muitas fotos de putas”. It means “Hookers, many pictures of hookers”. It talks about a nice pictorial of a dance club / bar in Thailand, early 60’s, used as R&R for American troops. It’s a historical document, very interesting, and all the ladies are far more dressed than any Britney / Lindsey / Christina you can remember of.
Guess what? Kids hate me. They reach the page through Google and feel betrayed. I promised and never delivered. It’s my second largest source of hate mail.
Use meaningful tags. Related to the kernel of your idea. A quick search for keywords in your text is not good enough. Spare a few minutes to think about your tags.
The result will be supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
(yes, it’s a lame ending line but I needed an excuse to use a silly tag. See? This is not Holly Writ; I can bend my own rules here and there)