1. Folksonomy is used to categorize and
retrieve Web pages, photographs, Web
links and other Web content using open
ended labels called tags. Typically,
folksonomies are Internet-based, but
their use may occur in other contexts
as well.
2. Folksonomies became popular on the Web
around 2004 as part of social software
applications such as social bookmarking and
photograph annotation. Tagging, which is one
of the defining characteristics of Web 2.0
services, allows users to collectively classify
and find information. Some websites include
tag clouds as a way to visualize tags in a
folksonomy.
3. An example of this is the hashtags used on
social networking site Twitter. Hashtags were
most notable during the San Diego forest
fires in 2007 when Nate Ritter used the
hashtag: “sandiegofire” to identify his
updates related to the disaster.