Hitchhiking Life

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen. - DNA
Ramblings of a guy who is taking life as it comes.
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Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Folksonomies (as opposed to taxonomies)

I have been watching a new technology that has got tongues in the online community wagging a lot lately. Its called the folksonomy phenomenon. It is a distributed way of tagging content on the web. It is inherently different from taxonomy which is more rigid in nature. It may be defined as loose taxonomy. Here content is tagged based on social perception and situational context. A remarkable site that lets you practice folksonomy is DEL.ICIO.US. It adds a script to the bookmarks toolbar of your browser that lets you add tags to url's that one visits based on personal relevance. These tags can then be shared with the other users of the online community. An interesting picture that emerges is that website publishers have no control over the taxonomical classification of the content on their webpage. Instead the online community decides relevant tags for the webpage. It is a very powerful system of classifying content that is more relevant to the end user. It would come as no surprise if Window wasnt tagged under OS but is tagged as JUNK ;-). An useful feature that I would like added to the site is something I would call REVERSE FOLKSONOMY. This feature would given an URL, tell me what are the various TAGS that have been assigned to it arranged according to number. That would help me re-think my entire publishing strategy and ensure that my content means what I want it to mean. Neat huh?

2 Comments:

At 8:41 AM, Blogger Alvin said...

interisting thoughts.
id like to see what would happen.
curious.

 
At 8:41 AM, Blogger Alvin said...

woopS
spelt INTERESTING

 

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