Understanding Folksonomies: A Guide to Collaborative Tagging

1. Tags and Folksonomies

2. Contents • Taxonomies • Folksonomies • Delicious.com • Individual Users • Community • Principles • Other Applications using Folksonomies

3. Taxonomy • Before the Internet, the most common way to classify objects was using a taxonomy:

4. Taxonomy, ctd • Your bookmarks, in your browser, also form a taxonomy. • In a taxonomy, each item has a unique set of descriptors. • For example, a human was a mammal, a type of animal, living, a part of the earth. • But what if you also wanted to classify humans as homo sapiens? • Before the visualizations provided by computers, this was difficult to manage.

5. Folksonomies • In a folksonomy, each item can be given several tags. • A human can be tagged as a mammal, a homo sapien, etc. • The term folksonomy refers to the tagging being collaborative, done by anyone in a community. • Folksonomy became popular around 2004 in several web applications. • Let's look at an application that can transform your bookmarks from a taxonomy to a folksonomy.

6. Delicious.com – individual user • Notice the tag icon on my tool bar. • I can use it to bookmark, tag and comment on any site. • Go to a new site and try it. • Click Delicious/Bookmarks on Delicious • I can browse my bookmarks in chronological order • Or type in a tag • To install this, go to www.delicious.com and register. • Then install add-ons to your browsers on each machine you use. When you do, use the same login name. • You can always get to your bookmarks via www.delicious.com

7. Delicious - community • You can add delicious users to a network • To make it easier to share • Click People/My Network • When you bookmark a page, you can share it with delicious users, twitter users, or email it to anyone • You can also mark a bookmark as private. • You can Search Delicious (on the right) • Your, your network's, or Everyone's bookmarks • Unless they have been marked private • This is a way to find others to put in your network

8. Which Principles does Delicious embody? • Data Rules: The value of an application is increased by the scale and dynamism of the data it manages • The long tail: Small products/ideas make up the great majority of all products/ideas. • Use your Users: Enable users to contribute content to the application • The Power of Groups: Apply the wisdom of users to solve problems • Enable Community: Enable users to share their experiences in your application • Folksonomy, not Taxonomy: Utilize user-generated tags to classify items, instead of expertly generated categories

9. Other applications using tags • www.photobucket.com – notice the tag cloud • YouTube • Meta tags on web pages • Others?