PUBLIC MARKS from svartling with tags tagging & web2.0

Many people think tagging provides an elegant paradigm of organizing information. In addition, we're starting to see the "power of many" being leveraged to build fancy stuff like shared folksonomies where you plug your personal information sphere into the collective mindset. Having sat through half a dozen usability tests for MyJeeves, however, it is pretty clear to me that foldering is a more intuitive way of organizing, especially to those new to the exciting world of personal information management. Foldering may be clunky, but it's how people think - at least that's how they think today. Maybe it's because we are naturally wired that way, or maybe it's because most of us grew up with Windows. What is certain is that after a while, most users end up with an unmanageable folder hierarchy and start losing track of where things are. What can be done to take users out of this frustrating mess? Or more exactly, assuming that tagging is indeed one solution, how can we help users to transition from folders to tags, or at least add tagging to their repetoire? When we were scoping MyJeeves 1.2 a while back, this was the topic of endless coffee talks…and one or two beer talks.