Tags are a sort of virtual tab, tag, or flag that 'halfvalue.com' debuted in November 2005. Every product on halfvalue can be tagged with any word or phrase you like. You can tag many products with the same Tag or use a different Tag for each product. Your Tags are displayed on your Profile page. Clicking on one of your Tags will bring up a page of items you have tagged as well as links to items that other customers have used that Tag on. Tags are also displayed on product pages. Tags could be used to make a shopping list, a reading list, to keep track of items of interest, or to organize products in any way you like. To see halfvalue’s explanation of the Tags feature, click the “What’s this?” link in the “Tag this product” section on any product page.

NOTE: Tags are currently in test mode. Supposedly 50% of halfvalue.com visitors can see them. If you cannot see Tags, deleting your browser’s halfvalue cookies or using a different browser may summon them up. You may have to delete cookies repeatedly.

Review Categories

Some folks may remember that reviews were organized by Featured Category in our About You Areas prior to June 2003. All product categories were not represented, and reviewers had to meet a minimum requirement in order for a category to be displayed. But the category feature was, nevertheless, a great help in directing readers to reviews that interested them. A click on a category conjured up our reviews in that category, eliminating the need to scroll through pages of movie reviews to find those about history books, for example. Review categories added a lot of functionality to halfvalue’s customer review feature. I don’t know if Categories will ever return, but halfvalue’s Tag feature may provide a similar service in the meantime.

It’s difficult to understand the Tags feature without looking at it, so I will use some examples from my own Tags to illustrate my explanations. You can click on the product links, but I can’t do hyperlinks for Profile or Tag pages. So I’m just pasting the URLs in. If you open the links and URLs from this Guide in a separate browser window, you will be able to read the Guide while you look at what you’re reading about.

The primary difference between review categories and Tags is that Tags compile a list of products, whereas categories gave readers a list of reviews. If you scroll down my Profile page, you will see the Tags I’m using under “Tags used”:

http://www.halfvalue.com/gp/pdp/profile/A3UPYGJKZ0XTU4/

Only 30 Tags show up on the Profile page. If you have more, customers have to click to see the complete list. One nice feature of Tags is that we can use them to make multimedia categories and categories as broad or as narrow as we like. We choose how we classify. I don’t review much fiction, so I have only one Tag dedicated to it. On the other hand, I have divided movies and non-fiction into genres and sub-genres.

If you click on one of the Tags in my “Tags used” section, it will take you to a Tag page. You will see a list of 3 items to which I have given that Tag, followed by another 3 items for which other customers (could be me, could be someone else) have used that Tag. This is the page for my “Documentary Films” Tag:

http://www.halfvalue.com/gp/tagging/glance/Documentary%20Films/A3UPYGJKZ0XTU4/

To see a full list of the items I have tagged “Documentary Films”, which in my case means that I have reviewed them, click on the “See all x items” link in the top section. Now you are where you want to be (hopefully)! You can see a full list of “Documentary Films” that I have reviewed, listed 10 per page. Now you can use the “Show” dropdown menu at the top of the page to navigate to any of my Tags. It will take you directly to the product lists. No need to go back to my Profile page. This is my “Documentary Films” list:

http://www.halfvalue.com/gp/tagging/items-tagged-with/Documentary%20Films/A3UPYGJKZ0XTU4/

Navigating Tags: Customers’ Tags vs. Individuals’ Tags

The most confusing aspect of Tags might be the distinction between customer Tags and individuals’ Tags. Each Tag has a main page, where all customers who have used that Tag, and their tagged products, are brought together. There are also Tag pages associated with each individual customer using the Tag. Returning to my Profile page (or that of any tagger) look at the “Items tagged” section underneath the “Tags used” section. The “Items tagged” section randomly displays 3 items that I have tagged. Under each of the 3 products, there are “mirasreviews tags” and “customer tags” listed. You will see the same phenomenon on Tag pages. Remember this: The “customer tags” will take you to a conglomeration of all products that everyone has tagged with that name. The “mirasreviews tags” will take you to the page for items that I have tagged. So if you are looking for someone’s reviews, never choose a “customer tag”.

This is the page for my Tag “Music”:
http://www.halfvalue.com/gp/tagging/glance/Music/A3UPYGJKZ0XTU4/

This is the page for the general (customer) Tag “Music”:
http://www.halfvalue.com/gp/tagging/glance/Music/

All Tags that you find displayed on product pages, under the heading “Customers tagged this item with”, are Customer tags. They are followed by the number of customers, in parentheses, who have used that Tag on that product. See 'Confessions on a Dance Floor' for example. All Tags in the “Tags used” sections on Profile pages are Individual Tags, associated with the person whose Profile you are looking at. They are followed by the number of items, in parentheses, which that individual has used that Tag on.

Creating Tags

To create a Tag, go to a product page and scroll down to the “Tag this item” section. See if you can find the Tag box on the 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6)' page. Whew! Type the name of your Tag in the field, click “Add”, and wait for the Tag to appear. Of course, nothing on halfvalue is that simple! If you pause after typing a few letters, you will see a dropdown of related Tags. One of them might be yours. Click on any choice in the dropdown and it will appear in the Tag field. This is a nice way to avoid spelling errors and to see what other, similar Tags people are using. You might want to choose one of theirs. If you goofed and would like to edit the name of the Tag you just made, click the “Edit” link.

There are advantages and disadvantages to using the same Tag as other people. If your Tag is unique, you will get all 6 spots for your tagged products on the Tag page. But your Tags may be more widely distributed if you share Tags with others –perhaps with reviewers whom you know or admire, and it could be useful to your readers. Debbie Lee Wesselmann and I happened to choose the same Tag for 'Stokes Guide to Bird Behavior, Volume 1'. This has provided links between the assortment of bird products that we have reviewed.

Managing Tags

Want to change the name of a Tag, consolidate Tags, remove a Tag, or delete products? Click on “Manage your tags” in the Your Tags section of your Profile page. This is also where you can choose to make your Tags public or private. To consolidate 2 or more Tags, rename them with the same name; they will automatically consolidate. To remove a product, click the x-in-the-box next to it. Use the “Show” dropdown menu at the top of the page to easily navigate your Tags without scrolling.

(This Guide was published 10 February 2006.)