Folksonomy Unveiled

What is Folksonomy?

Folksonomy is the process of collaborative creation and management of tags in order to categorize content on the web. Also known as social tagging, social indexing, collaborative tagging or social classification, folksonomy is a taxonomy that is managed by users themselves. Folksonomies became popular with the advent of social software applications in the like of social bookmarking sites. Websites that utilize folksonomy are based on Web 2.0 principles that facilitate easy participation by users.

Origin

Folksonomy = Folk + Taxonomy

The term “folksonomy” was coined by Thomas Vander Wal in 2004 during a discussion on information architecture mailing list.

What are Tag Clouds?

A system by which the classifying tags are presented to the user in a visual format. This is done in such a way that the most used tags in a particular folksonomy are shown in a bold size.

Folksonomy versus Taxonomy

Folksonomy essentially subverts the status quo of taxonomic classification in the earlier w3 setup. It breaks free from the hitherto monopoly of search engines to provide the user with resources of information. Sites based on folksonomy provide facilities to the user for creating and utilizing tags. In fact, folksonomy creation and search parameters are quite different from those of taxonomies in the World Wide Web protocols.

Merits of Folksonomy

• It becomes easier to search for and navigate over content.

• Categories of information are more accessible to end-users.