Today i'm looking at folksonomy. Ineed, the word does seem to connote something reminiscent of that thing we use to hold dear in America, but which has since seem to become a figment of our imaginations. This, however, is far from what a folksonomy is.

A conjuction of the words 'folk' and 'taxonomy,' a folksonomy is a term used to describe classification and categorization on the web. Most users familiar with sites like Digg, Reddit and others would immediately be able to relate with this concept. The rise of social bookmarking as a way to disseminate the incomprehensible amount of the data on the web has become exponentially popular. There is really no better way to have the internet take some shape and become something of relevance. Anyone who has spent some time on search engines can empathize with the frustation that can occur when you're looking for something specific and the search engine brings up web pages that have no relevance, but because the word appears is among the first ten web pages you see.

A site like Digg allows users to rate how much they like a website, and subsequently it can become popular if enough users agree on it's relative value. This reminds me alot of a concept I learned in one of my first communication classes about the semantic trianle. In a nutshell, a word is assigned to an object, it is agreed upon by the majority, and it comes to symbolize that object: arbitrary, abstract, and ambiguous are the terms we used to describe a word. The same applies to what makes a page on digg popular; the majority agree that a web page has value--arbitrary, the web pages' relevance to the digg community is difficult to discern--abstract, what makes it popular is the fact that people find meaning in it differently--ambiguous.

This, i'm sure, even qualifies as an abstract interpretation of what a folksonomy is. There may be a more appropriate theory that explains the mechanics of social bookmarking, but I thought I would just introduce this concept to our ongoing discussion.

Feel free to bookmark it if you like!