General patterns of tag usage among university groups in Flickr

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to investigate general patterns of tag usage and determines the usefulness of the tags used within university image groups to the wider Flickr community. There has been a significant rise in the use of Web 2.0 social network web sites and online applications in recent years. One of the most popular is Flickr, an online image management application. Design/methodology/approach – This study uses a webometric data collection, classification and informetric analysis. Findings – The results show that members of university image groups tend to tag in a manner that is of use to users of the system as a whole rather than merely for the tag creator. Originality/value – This paper gives a valuable insight into the tagging practices of image groups in Flickr.