Why we tag

TLDR

People rarely tag photos despite the potential benefits for recall and retrieval. The study investigates the incentives for annotating photos on Flickr and in the ZoneTag cameraphone tool. ZoneTag eases tagging by allowing immediate annotation and suggesting relevant tags after capture. On Flickr, textual tags serve personal and social purposes, boosting incentives and resulting in a high number of annotations.

Abstract

Why do people tag? Users have mostly avoided annotating media such as photos -- both in desktop and mobile environments -- despite the many potential uses for annotations, including recall and retrieval. We investigate the incentives for annotation in Flickr, a popular web-based photo-sharing system, and ZoneTag, a cameraphone photo capture and annotation tool that uploads images to Flickr. In Flickr, annotation (as textual tags) serves both personal and social purposes, increasing incentives for tagging and resulting in a relatively high number of annotations. ZoneTag, in turn, makes it easier to tag cameraphone photos that are uploaded to Flickr by allowing annotation and suggesting relevant tags immediately after capture.