TagReel: A Visualization of Tag Relations among User Interests in the Social Tagging System

Social tagging systems provide users with the ability to share information and extend their field of knowledge. The purpose of this paper is to explore the tag relations of user interest in these systems and examine the semantic relations of tag usage in terms of user interests. To do this, a classifying method was used to characterize words into seven classes. Experiments were limited to the five areas of interests: music, photography, games, books and videos. Samples were taken from 50 English-language Web pages in the social bookmarking service Delicious. The top 7 tags were extracted from each Web page that was tagged as music, photography, games, books and videos. Via the results of the tag analysis of this study, relationship between tags and user interests were demonstrated. TagReel employed a radial visualization method, which has the advantage of giving an overview of the whole cluster of connection among tags. TagReel can represent the semantic concept of connection between tags and between interests. It can contribute to raising the cognitive power and awareness of tag usage in various categories and show the relative weight of tags.