Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion has already called 2005 the "Year of the Tag." Now the mainstream media seems to be picking up on the idea. Tagging is catching on in popularity as a way to organize online information, whether it's images, ideas or videos: "Tagging has the potential to change how we keep track of and discover things digital -- even whom we meet online... It could be our salvation as we attempt to sift through the growing clutter of data we're amassing on our hard drives and on that growing digital repository that is the Internet."

The founder of Del.icio.us, a New York-based tagging service, explains: "People are awash in an overwhelming sea of stuff. Our ability to produce content far outstrips the ability to sort and consume it.'"

Clay Shirky, an NYU professor (and also a Corante contributor), thinks tagging has the potential to change the online experience: "You start being able to have other people discover things for you without you knowing you wanted to look for them."