On this page you will find answers to some of the most frequently asked questions.
A tag is like a keyword that relates to an object or item. In this case, it relates to a web page or site - more on that later.
Sites like Flickr (pictures), Technorati (blogs), Del.icio.us (bookmarks), Last.fm (music) and many others allow users to "tag" their content, find similar objects by searching for tags, etc. as well as display tag clouds where users can see in a visually appealing way a collection of tags somewhat emphasized by using different colors or sized fonts (the bigger the font, the more relevant or popular the tag is), that lead to a list of objects or items associated with those tags.
This is done by offering a web page where anyone can book a particular tag that will later be displayed in the main tag cloud at the 1000tags.com page, as well as allowing web site owners to add their tag - for free of course - by syndicating a small tag cloud at their pages.
Exclusive tags are tags that once booked, nobody else can use them. The tag must have not been booked before, of course. Also, when someone books an exclusive tag, the user booking it decides the size (weight) of the tag: the bigger the font size, the more it costs.
Because this goes against the way tags are normally used, not only we discourage users to book exclusive tags by pricing them quite higher than shared tags, but also we won't allow more than 50 exclusive tags. That is, once 50 exclusive tags have been booked, no more will be allowed.
Shared tags are the way to go. Anyone can book a shared tag even if someone else has already share-booked it. Then, when someone clicks on a shared tag, a list of the sites that booked that tag will be presented in no particular order.
The beauty of shared tags is that, just like regular tag clouds, the more people book them, the more weight (font size) they will have in the tag cloud. So if you happen to book a heavily booked tag, your site will appear in a longer list of sites, but your tag will also be much more visible in the tag cloud.
If your site is all about music, think of using tags like music, rock, songs, etc. Is it a community oriented site? Check out tags like community, chat, make friends... Do you sell toys online? Book toys, kids, etc. Hosting? Well, how about hosting or cheap hosting? Is it something very specific, like say, selling a book titled "How to sell on eBay"? Use a tag like eBay, sell on eBay, or something like that.
Yes, you can use spaces or punctuation marks. Just remember, you only have up to 20 characters. There's nothing wrong with longer tags, they just don't look as good in the "cloud".
Oh, but be careful using capital letters. If you use too many, the system won't like it and may ask you to go easy on them :-)
Also, it may send a lot of visitors to your web site. After all, you've already landed at this site and you won't be the last one. That also means that the sooner you book a tag, the more visibility you'll get.
Besides, we're not just going to let the page sit there. In fact, we have tons of ideas that could easily be implemented: offering an API so other sites can exchange data with 1000tags.com, add a search box, provide lots of stats (we're already keeping track of them, just haven't made them available but will do soon) and many other things...
If, on the other hand, you don't want to syndicate our tag cloud, you can purchase a tag. If that's your case, the price goes like this (in US$):
Either way, as you define your tag, you will be able to see how it'd look and how much it will cost in real time, so you can always play around until you find the combination tag/price you like.
Did we mention you can get a tag for free too?
True, exclusive tags don't follow that rule, that's why we won't allow more than 50 tags out of the whole cloud no matter how large it grows to be "artificially inflated". We could have launched 1000tags.com without exclusive tags, but that's also part of what we'd like to find out: whether there's an interest in artificially giving more relevance to a tag by paying for it. By limiting the number of exclusive tags to no more than 50, we believe that the resulting tag cloud won't present "fake" results. Perhaps someone in the future does try to make a quick buck by offering wholly artificial tag clouds, but that's not what we're doing here.
In general, as folksonomies continue taking over the way we search and organize information on the net, someone's going to figure out if there's more to it than that, then we'll all go from there. Who knows? Perhaps in the future Google decides to offer "paid tag clouds" instead of "paid text ads". And perhaps, just perhaps, we like it that way better.