It appears that in the modern world of information overload, where selection of valuable data becomes a necessity, folksonomy seems to be the tool for screening. The idea of tags allocated by individuals, shared in a common social medium, in other words economising the links with appropriate titles, seems to benefit everyone engaged in the process.
Employing of taxonomy for creation and marketing of publication will eventually be a norm in the virtual world. In collection of research articles from the WWW for the purpose a publication can be economised by d.e.l.i.c.i.o.u.s or Google reader or any such RSS feed servers. You can categorise and keep all the relevant links through hypertext in one place – gathering into one page from all over the virtual world.
Many websites now provide the tag clouds to filter through their content. The Amazone example shows that sometimes it defeats the purpose of economising as same product is tagged over 395 times; it is more a crowd than taxonomy. But from a business point of view (irrespective personal views), the multi tags will link the product to different genre; thus providing more exposure to the product.
A good tag cloud should be the one leading to easy search and brings out the accent of ideas on the page. It should serve the purpose of easy manoeuvring beyond being an artistic mess. The example of MSNBC brings out the ideological emphasis seen through tags. In the example Edwards and Clinton seem to emphasise more on presidency, whereas Obama brings out woman and families. The creation of tag clouds of the past writings and present day writings can possibly bring out the ideological evolution of human history. Very interesting to see how folksonomy is leading to an unintended consequence of comparative analysis.
I really appreciated your title and it rang a very strong resonance with me! Folksonomy as a way to manage information overload in Web 2.0. I have been 'bookmarking' sites on my home and work computer for many years and attempting to keep them somewhat organized in files to be able to find them again.As your career continues I have bookmarked many, many sites - most of them valuable, but in healthcare the deluge of information on a daily basis is impossible to keep up with and in default I rely on a few sites that I remember and am comfortable with and listserves to remind me to check websites for new information. So in Vanderwals' scaling I have been tagging for personal use for years.
ReplyDeleteThe Delicious site has been an enlightening experience for me. I was able to import my personal bookmarks from my laptop and work and home computers into one area that has provided some structure (for me) using 'tags' that make sense to me. This folksonomy and opportunity to 'tag' has actually made it much easier for me to again use many sites for information by looking for my tags rather than a specific site, and assisting in managing my information overload. I'm still at the personal functionality but will work my way up the scaling and functionality.
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