I'd like to note - if you are actually using, following, and loving personal tags I would love to hear as much or as little about why and how you use them. What do you like about personal tags? Where does the personal tag and thoughts about the personal tag fit into how you use Hubski? Etc. As far as I can tell, very few people are actually using and following the personal tags - or specifically choosing to personally tag things so that people can follow their content. I've found most people like the idea of being able to have more granular control over what they see and follow... but I don't see it actually being used. I know I don't. So, if you can give us some insight into this we may be able to come up with a better solution that provides value to you and probably the larger Hubski community. Personal tags had good intentions and looks great on paper. But there is something missing or slightly off, which is why we don't see them being used consistently.
I'm definitely guilty wanting more granular control but not using it at this point. My main thought is that the granular controls would be significantly more useful if Hubski were a significantly larger community. So, for me it'd potentially be useful in the future, but not as much right now.
I follow people, not tags, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. I have a general idea of what people are going to post because I get to know them first. So if I'm following a person, I don't care if they post something via a personal tag, because I'm probably going to like what they post anyways. The only time I interact with tags is when I want to ignore them (#reddit), or I'm creating original content that people might want to ignore and I want to make it easy for them to do so: (#hubskina.eightbitsamurai, #writing.eightbitsamurai)
As a content creator I have been using the personal tag in order to make my OC clearly visible and therefore sortable or (in my dreams) followable - you know, feed the horde of fawning followers that I have - as 8bit said, it also allows people to easily hide my OC if they don't like it. I typically have used blog._refugee_ and poetry._refugee_ though once or twice I've messed it up and called my OC something else somehow. I see a great value in having those tags from the content creator side because then it's all there if someone wants to go look! However, I happen to know how many people follow poetry._refugee_, and it's like two, and I do suspect that the value I find in the personal tag (for in case! basically) is not equal to the value that Hubski users are actually getting out of it.
I never figured out how to do anything useful with personal tags. It simply wasn't intuitive for me. That said, they were useful to see who the "user-inactivated" was because you guys never scrubbed the personal tag. So - aside from schadenfreude they were fundamentally useless to me.
I like to use personal tags for #musings.mk and #myart.mk. I also try to use #music.mk in a specific manner. But I recently posted an article about Fugazi that I would have preferred to be in #music, but not #music.mk. I am following three personal tags: #technology.veen, #askhubski.lil, and #books.ButterflyEffect. It doesn't really make sense for me to follow #askhubski.lil anymore, because I follow lil anyway. I think I followed it because I was filtering #askhubski at the time. Oh, I also follow #hubskina.eightbitsamurai because it is the only sensible thing to do.
yeah, me too. but that's the only personal tag I follow. I just realized, however, that even if I don't follow a personal tag, I could become aware that there is one such as #musings.mk and then if I suddenly need to research mk's musings over the past 1437 days, they are all there for me in one spot. I'm too busy to be that obsessive, but for the obsessives among us, it could be handy.Oh, I also follow #hubskina.eightbitsamurai because it is the only sensible thing to do.