What do you think of when you hear the term “Web 2.0“? According to Wikipedia (and various other in-the-know sites), it’s a panoply of new technologies designed to more thoroughly integrate the web into our lives, and vice versa. One of the most notable devices using the name Web 2.0 is the “tags” system. Sure, it sounds good… Wikipedia even has a neat little image (shown left) at which we can marvel. All sorts of useful, informational, helpful tags to show idea links, thought paths, and bread-crumb paths along a logical flow of data.

Sadly, the naive, optimistic view of the inventors of such technology never seem to take into account the overwhelming greed of spammers. Here’s a look at the tag “swarm” today on Technorati.

Looks like.. auctions, auctions, (news), auctions, auctions, (soccer), auctions, auctions, Sex!, auctions… Yeah, good work there, Web 2.0. If you leave an opening for spammers to dig their nasty little links in, the spammers will happily fill it.

I think I’ll hold off on adding any of those “tags” plugins being promoted over on WordPress.org.