“Tagging” – which is also called “social bookmarking” or “collaborative tagging,” is an increasingly popular way to locate, classify, rank, and share Internet resources through the use of shared lists of user-created Internet bookmarks. Users store lists of personally interesting Internet resources, and typically make these lists publicly accessible. They also classify their resources by the use of informally assigned, user-defined keywords or tags.
“Conversations provide a rich source of information that can be tapped to help businesses operate more efficiently and effectively,” said Avaya Labs scientist Doree Seligmann, director, Collaborative Applications Research. “By using sophisticated new algorithms and models that ‘reason’ about the ‘who, what, when, where and why’ of communications, we can capture and mine conversations, just as we do by searching email and other electronic documents.”
Seligmann says tagging holds the potential to help businesses readily identify subject-matter experts who can serve customers and support strategic initiatives. For example, a field technician could find individuals with the expertise needed to troubleshoot a customer problem. A marketing director could identify those familiar with an emerging market trend. Human Resources executives could determine existing pockets of company expertise, which in turn could drive staffing and training investments.
“By storing, searching and retrieving information from conversations, we can mine a previously untapped resource and drive intelligent communications capabilities throughout a company’s operations,” Seligmann said.