Lord of the Tagspace

Stowe raises an interesting discussion today regarding the new Technorati Kitcken, or as Michael Arrington refers to it, "where Technorati is putting it’s not-fully-baked beta products".

Imagine the opportunity: Technorati has the world's largest tagspace, and all of a sudden all those hot tags -- that we have lovingly created for them -- now become communities where people come to exchange views and learn. I predict that T'rati will start bringing more social tools into the mix: why not let people comment directly in the tagspace, for example?

Source: GetReal, "Technorati Explore: The Tagspace As The Future of Media"

It's an intriguing question when you think about it - and really quite obvious. More than a year ago, I was working with the Pokkari crew, makers of blip.tv, and we approached this very same problem with the Relevanta aggregator. Relevanta was a great system that aggregated posts from a growing collection of blog entries, added in a reputation engine, and centralized a community around an area of focus. It was certainly "new" back then, but it seems like it's starting to get that "new new" luster once again.

I've been spending a lot of time working with tagging and its relationship to both navigation and community development. It's still surprising just how much potential is not tapped and how many problems still need addressing in major way before we can leap to the next plateau. I'm still confident we're nearing a new wave. I can hear the Yahoo!s already ;)