I’ve gone back and forth a few times about use of tags vs. categories in FML. I’ve also tried various methods for making insertion of tags and categories easier to do, with limited success. This leads to a messy blog, I guess, but hey, this wasn’t intended to be a cataloging project or a demo site for the efficacy of tags! As an aside, using tags or categories is kind of like authority work for library cataloging in that it is or can be the part of the process of creating a blog post that takes the longest. Another piece that I am beginning to hate to do because it takes a long time, is put in all of the possible or necessary URL links. OK, I’m link lazy, get over it. Yet neglecting these two aspects of blogging has a very detrimental effect because links and tags are, in my view, the two discovery pieces that drive most of the traffic in the blogosphere. Steven Cohen of Library Stuff may be able to get away with not using tags or categories but based on my experience, if I want something I have to say to be read or picked up elsewhere, it had better be tagged or categorized somehow.
Currently I have settled for using Flock as my blogging platform of choice, mainly because I have found that it provides the easiest way for me to write, tag, and link of any of the tools I’ve tried to date. Also, instead of using categories I will now just focus on tags. And these tags will be Technorati tags, because in my experience, Technorati is arguably the blog search and navigation tool of choice.
