Technorati seems to be messing around with something they're calling "tags", as a system of web-based meta data. The main method that the tags are generated is form the category label in a blog post, which is probably the "correct" way of doing this. My goal, when something like this comes out, is to make sure that Goats is properly represented in the taxonomy. (At least until the system gets hijacked by spammers.)

In our current RSS feed, I went for very specific category tags, which is useful to the end user, but less useful to us in a system like this. For example, I use the category "goats comic" for a comic strip, instead of just "comic", which would get us better represented in the category. I have four options:

1. Ignore it
2. Use their alternate system of adding categories.
3. Change our tag to the "best" option they have widely used, where "best" is some combination of likely to be search on, and not so-cluttered that we'll get lost.
4. Start using multiple categories per entry.

Option one isn't really an option, or I wouldn't be thinking about it here. Option two would require me to add special tags to every post (e.g. Dumbrella, comics, webcomics) in order to get them where I think they "should" be. Option three is a decent short term fix, but as the categories we care about (if we care about them) change, it becomes less appealing. Long term, the fourth option is the only "real" option. I need to check the RSS spec to see what the rules about multiple categories are, and see about adding that. Also, right now the categories I use in the news system aren't very customizable, so that's probably something worth changing/fixing.

Their system really has to learn about stemming too, "comic" and "comics" should not be two separate lists.