Systems and methods for managing digital assets in a distributed computing environment are described. Meta-data for the digital assets is stored separately from the digital assets. Meta-data for some of the digital assets is copied and stored at a central location. Meta-data for the digital assets is generated by clients of the system. A method of displaying digital asset of a distributed computing system according to an organization specified by the end-user of a client includes: receiving an organization semantic having at least one depth level from an end-user of the client, the organization semantic specifying at least one attribute of a digital asset identification tag; and displaying, to the end-user of the client, on a virtual computing element the digital assets of the distributed computing system that substantially match the organization semantic defined by the end-user, without reference to a pre-existing organizational hierarchy of the distributed computing environment.