Tagfoot Tutorial

Tagfoot calls itself a "no-nonsense social networking site". It truly is an all-in-one site for organizing your whole collection of bookmarks, sharing sites with friends, gathering a collection of Internet videos, posting bloggish entries called "footnotes", and having conversations on various topics through comments. The Tubefoot (part of the sidefoot you can download for your browser) lets you play from the videos saved on Tagfoot to entertain you while you browse. Enter a tag into the filter and it will create a playlist for you. There are a lot of features and ways to use the site for organizing or being social. Be social or keep to yourself as you see fit.

You also add subject tags to yourself on your profile. These self-tags help Tagfoot friends know what kind of things to share with you. They also can be used to send messages to groups of friends. Just enter "tag:music" in the username or email field of the message to send the YouTube music video you found with friends who are tagged "music". You can select more than one tag for a message and the system will sort through so no duplicate messages are sent to friends who have more than one of the tags.

Do not neglect to tag yourself with your favorite topics on your profile. That is the first thing a new Tagfoot member should do.

Grouping your friends with tags keeps things simple and saves time when sharing. Use a friend's self-tags as a guide, but create your own system of common tags that you will use for sharing. You can edit the tags for your existing friends from your friends list. When you have accepted a new friend, edit their self tags right away to match with the common tags you use. I consolidated various similar tags, like "funny", "comedy", "humour" into all just "humor".

Footing is a term and a system unique to this site. When a friend shares something with you, there is the opportunity to give them feedback in the form of a "foot". There are two buttons that appear when you click on a message. The one on the right says "Foot [username]". Click on the foot button and a window pops up with three options for footing. This tells your friends how well they are targeting their sharing. There are three options.

[+1] is good and tells that person you want more of that kind of share. Your friend also gets a foot point to boost his or her status.

[O] is neutral (as far as footing points go) and tells a person that he or she missed the mark this time.

[!!!] (formerly -1) says that the person needs to slow down, give your inbox a rest, and target his or her shares to people who are interested in the topics.

If a Tagfoot friend does not clue in after several foot messages and continues to overshare or send objectionable content, you can block that person's messages. They will not receive any message telling them that they have been blocked. It is a completely private action. They will lose a lot of foot points and take a hit in status. You will not be bothered again by any messages from them.

The block stops only incoming messages. The person will stay on your friends list and you can send messages to them.

How Often to Share
Basic Tagfoot sharing etiquette, after much commenting and discussion among the community, is shaping up to be that somewhere between one and three shares a day is reasonable and more is rude. One member's motto is "quality not quantity" and that is what you want to be known for in your shares. When you have 100 or more friends and they each share something with you, that is 100 or more messages a day. Do not feel obligated to share something every day.

Share with Tags
Use the "share to all friends" option as little as possible and only for things that are of general appeal to everyone. Remember, that is what the tags are for. Address your shares with the appropriate tag and only those friends who are interested will get it.

You can send one share message to several tags at the same time, just separate them by a comma. Don't worry that friends who are tagged with more than one topic will get duplicate messages. The system automatically sorts that out and each friend will get only one message.

Please understand that your friends probably get a lot of messages in their Tagfoot inbox. Even using tags, do not expect everyone to comment or respond to everything that you share.

Share Each Site Only Once
As a lensmaster or creator of any web content, it may be tempting to share your sites again after an update or if it has been a long time since you first shared it. Be aware that Tagfoot is not meant to be your personal promotional tool. It is an organizational and social networking site. Some self-promotion may happen naturally, but it is not the primary purpose or use for the site.

Lensmasters should use the Squidoo Squidcast system to let fans know about major updates to lenses. Tagfoot is not the place for that.

Sharing the same article or lens again to the same tag is very annoying to the friends who received the message the first time. Some of them may have already even given a comment. Repeat sharing is a good way to get yourself blocked or removed as a friend.

If there is something you've already shared but a new friend might love, share it to just that individual friend.

Include a Message With Your Share
A thoughtful sharer will add an original message to the automatic "check this out" followed by url. Sometimes the subject line is not clear and more information about what you are sharing helps. Tell friends why it was so valuable, funny, or interesting that you just had to share it. This makes the sharing feel personal. It shows you took time and care about what you share.

There are strategies you can use to help the message overload in your e-mail inbox. First, go to settings and stop notifications for everything except what you really want to be alerted to. I still keep notification for private messages (which includes shares), but do what works for you. I may end up turning that off as well since I usually sign into Tagfoot every day.

Now to managing the Tagfoot inbox. The message traffic is getting better because there have been a couple of huge conversations about it in comments. Still, if you have a lot of friends, your Tagfoot inbox is going to be busy. One way to make sure you don't miss your favorite footer's messages is to use the star feature in the message tab. On the right of the screen, the sidebar shows the names of your friends who have sent you messages. Next to each username is a star. Click on the star to make that username stick up on the top. Just click on any username to see all the messages that person has sent to you.

An easy way to quickly see what friends are up to and are talking about is to use the friends timeline on your profile page. There are several timeline options to choose from. Just hold your cursor over the arrow on the timeline tab until the menu drops down and select "[your username] and friends timeline". It shows all their recent Tagfoot activity, or "footsteps", along with yours. This has become my favorite way to browse Tagfoot and keep up with current conversations. I don't even subscribe to comments anymore.

The timeline can be customized to follow only the friends you want to see. Hold your cursor on the right side of the screen over an entry in the timeline to see a red icon appear. Clicking on that icon removes that person's feed from your timeline. You can add someone back from your friends list. Find their username and click on the "edit" option under the name. A window will pop up, select the "options" tab and select "follow" under the timeline options.

Right now there is a revenue sharing program.

Google AdSense
* You need your own Google AdSense ID. (You can use your Tagfoot profile as your site url to apply for a new AdSense account if you don't have one now.)
* You need to have added at least 10 items to all the categories (bookmarks, pictures, news, videos, wishlist) and have each properly tagged with short descriptive blurbs added.
* When ready to apply, contact support.
(see Tagfoot help for more details)

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