Last week I discovered an interesting project called Brand Tags (Brandtags.net), a website that lets visitors “tag” globally-recognized brands like Coca-Cola, Microsoft, GE, etc.

Tagging is a common function built into peer-to-peer social networks and web-based applications. For example, while watching YouTube videos or looking at photos on Flickr, you may notice a cluster of descriptive words to the right. Those are “tags” that the user has added to help categorize where the video belongs. Brand Tags works in a similar fashion, except that you tag based on your perception (not categorization) of the brands.

Brand Tags is fascinating because it gives us a window into the collective mind of hundreds of thousands of people and how they currently perceive large companies — companies that spend billions of dollars to shape our perceptions.

Below are a couple examples of brands and their corresponding tags:

Brand: Apple
Tags: Cool, Design, Awesome, Innovation
http://www.brandtags.net/browse.php?id=72

Brand: MySpace
Tags: Annoying, Friends, Music, Kids, Teenagers, Ugly
http://www.brandtags.net/browse.php?id=41

Brand: Google
Tags: Search, Everything, God, Evil
http://www.brandtags.net/browse.php?id=2

Brand: McDonald’s
Tags: Cheap, Fat, Food, Unhealthy
http://www.brandtags.net/browse.php?id=47

The Brand Tags project is just another example of how social mediums have leveled the playing field between large organizations and their consumers.

New social networks and applications pop up every day, causing many to suffer from what is known as "socal network fatigue." You’ve got too many usernames and passwords across multiple platforms to remember, and you’ve got different circles of friends spread across all the networks. This deluge of information can be difficult to manage.

Now, services are springing up that aim to help us with the social networking overload. One of particular interest is FriendFeed. Basically, you sign up once, enter all your logins for the various networks you participate in, and FriendFeed spits out a "life stream" of data about what you’re doing.

Imagine all of your recent Twitter and Facebook updates, Flickr photos, blog posts, Upcoming.org events, StumbleUpon bookmarks and favorited YouTube videos mashed together with what you’re currently listening to on Last.fm — all in one central feed.

FriendFeed serves as a chokepoint for all of the scattershot data we post about ourselves online, and time will tell if it’s a temporary cure for social networking fatigue.