WEB 2.0 AND ITS IMPACT ON THE 21ST CENTURY
 
   
 
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Folksonomy

A folksonomy is a user generated system of classification, through the use of tags, to search for web content, such as photographs, web pages, etc.

Searching for information is made so much easier with the process of folksonomic tagging. Social environments that uses the Internet as a medium tend to develop folksonomy. Because of this, users are able to find out who created a specific folksonomic tag, and other tags that the same person has created.

Folksonomy users realize that other users have a tendency to analyze content and create tags from it in such a way that it makes it logical and easily understandable to them.
 
 
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del.icio.us

del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website that enables people to register as members and share Internet bookmarks (or favourites). Its primary objective is to store bookmarks online, which creates an ease of accessibility from any computer.

Users can use their own tags to sort and remember their bookmarks in a more effective way. Instead of just storing bookmarks online, users can also share bookmarks with other users.

Visit del.icio.us at http://del.icio.us/

 
 
Flickr

Flickr is an online photo-sharing community. Bloggers use this service as a mean to upload and store their photos on the web. Users can create tags for their photos so that they can be browsed through with the entry of these tags into the search field. This is also another way of folksonomy.

Visit Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/

 
 
Review

Folksonomy is a distributed classification system, designed to make sorting and searching much easier. Indeed, it is a more efficient way than using folders and sub-folders, because you can assign multiple tags to one bookmark, whereas copying and pasting into the individual folders will take up more virtual memory space.

However, folksonomic tags are created by people who may have spent a lot of time and effort analyzing the content they tag and those who may not have the point of view to describe it properly or tag it with regards to the objects they do not have much knowledge in.