1. Lecture 15: Folksonomy
Module 6
Dr. Jessica Laccetti

2. Outline
• Key Ideas
• Folksonomy and Thomas Vander Wal
• Good and Bad Tag Clouds
• General Rules
• Homework

3. Key Ideas
• Folksonomy as social activity
• The erosion or at least blurring of
hierarchies and oppositions
• The impossibility of identity
• What are some current views about the
emergence and diffusion of media?

4. Folksonomy
• Folksonomy is the result of personal free
tagging of information and objects
(anything with a URL) for one's own
retrieval.
• The tagging is done in a social
environment (usually shared and open to
others).
• Folksonomy is created from the act of
tagging by the person consuming the
information.

5. The "f-word" (as Vander Wal puts it)
allows "regular" folks to categorise
or structure information in a way
that is pertinent to them (i.e.
personalised).

6. Folksonomy
• As the name suggests, it's a taxonomy made by
the folks – user generated definitions and
information structures.
• But folksonomy is just a part of a larger idea:
tagging.
• Tagging is the tying of words to objects.
• Vander Wall explains that this method of tagging
has less "cognitive load" for users because it’s
about key words rather than some kind of
overlying systemic planning
• I see it more of a free–form way of categorising
information – personalising it

7. Folksonomy
• Folksonomy is a subset of tagging –
identifying/categorising for personal use, “re–
finding” information
• This aspect of personalisation has important
impacts for the business sector in that it allows
businesses a view of their product from the
customers' point of view.
• Again, Vander Wal gives a funny example of how
tagging can affect your product by showing a cd
available on amazon.com (see here) and how it
was tagged:

9. Folksonomy
• You wouldn't want your product labelled as
"talentless" would you...?
• So, with the help of folksonomy, businesses
can move from their "top down" approach to
a more open and realistic understanding of
their product (or at least how it is perceived).

10. Folksonomy
• People/users/taggers are moving from
employing tags as descriptors for solely
personal use to, the other end of the
spectrum, where tags seem to be jumping off
points for dialogues and stories

11. Flickr and Folksonomy
• Have you noticed on flickr how some photos start
so many stories?
• Tags: pebbles, rocks, flag:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/omnia/90953407/
• Tags: moose, encounter:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lesec/258467874/
• Tags: fall, leaves:
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/robinthom/52759
426/

12. Visualising Information

13. Tag Cloud
• In an interview I was asked what makes a
good tag cloud?

14. Bad Tag Cloud

15. Good Tag Cloud

16. General Rules
• For me, a good tag cloud makes information accessible
to those who are interested in it.
• Tag clouds with a gazillion different terms look "messy"
to me.
• Do NOT include spam in tag clouds - that just changes
the whole positive participatory idea behind
folksonomy.
• Also, if taggers use a lot of similar words like:
blogger, blog, blogging, blogs - that just adds to the
mess.
• Stick to uppercase or lowercase and decide whether
you'll use singular or plural terms (blog or blogs?
FirstName or firstname?)

17. Tagging
• Is dynamic
• Offers serendipity (not structure)
• Reflects changing ideas
• Changing communication

18. Flickr in 2007

19. Flickr 2012

20. Why Tag?
• Access to information
• Useful for sorting (according to the user)
• Aggregation tool
• Social communication

22. Activity
• Go to Wordle.net and click “create”
• Open another tab and search for a job ad that
you would like to apply for (now or eventually)
• Copy the job ad and paste it into WORDLE
• What are the key tags that appear
• Has the tag cloud made certain elements of the
position more clear?
• Add your thoughts as a comment on today’s blog
post

23. Homework
• Create your own Delicious login and bookmark
two sites pertinent to this course.
– Be sure to include the course tag: ALES204, and
send to me using: for:ALES204.
• Biba will guest lecture on Friday, be ready to
send 3 critically literate tweets!