Folksonomies - Cooperative Classification and Communication through Shared Meta Data

Developed by: Adam Mathes
Type of resource: web article
Target audience: General
Cost: Free access

This paper by Adam Mathes examines grassroots metadata classification as applied in two web services, Del.icio.us, a tool for organising web pages; and Flikr, a service for organising and sharing photos. Metadata - data about data - facilitates grouping and finding of information. It examines the individual and community aspects of tagging, and focuses on the role of immediate feedback and bridging the gap from the personal to communicative. The article uses illustrative examples from the two web services to help the reader better understand folksonomy and tagging, and offers suggestions for future research.

http://www.adammathes.com/academic/computer-mediat
ed-communication/folksonomies.html