What is Tagging? What’s a Folksonomy?

You may have heard some to-do about the notion of tagging.
Tagging is organizing content organically and without a pre-determined structure.
So, instead of starting off with a big list of categories to choose for your posts, you ‘tag’ the posts as you go along with relevant keywords. You might write a post and tag it as businessblogging or homerjsimpson or chipsandsalsa. There is no list to choose from – you simply tag the information in a way that makes sense to you. Sort of like keywords.
When masses of people tag masses of content, patterns emerge.
Flickr, a photo-sharing community tracks images with tags. Each member tags their photos as they see fit – and common groups emerge:
kittens
puppies
dessert
You get the idea. The blog monitor Technorati, scans blog posts for tags and aggregates them up into ‘clouds’ of content. (Sorry superdorks, I just can’t say tag-osphere with a straight face)
This concept is also called ‘folksonomy’ because it is a taxonomy emerging from us common folk instead of being handed down by an information architect or librarian.
Look for this bright new shiny thing to be pillaged by spammers and/or marketing bastard-people.
For now though you can start adding tags to your own posts. Here’s how.
I’m tagging all of my posts in Nashville as ‘blognashville’ so you can go to Technorati and see all the other bloggers that have written posts tagged as blognashville.


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53 responses to “What is Tagging? What’s a Folksonomy?”

  1. zyban Avatar

    nphudfomxk

  2. elavil Avatar

    Finally we have a replacement for my long lost beloved riding crop! (The story about how I lost it is here if youÒre interested.)

  3. evista Avatar

    Your imagination, confidence, willingness to explore, and appreciation of beauty make you a CREATOR.

  4. flomax Avatar

    Kim RightÅ Look! Shadow puppets! ItÒs a dog! Ruff RuffÅ Meeow!

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  6. hgh Avatar

    I was thinking this afternoon about the old saw “A man wants all women for one thing, a woman wants one man for all things.”

  7. hyzaar Avatar

    I wonder how robust this statistic is? And does this one only tell half of its own story?

  8. ibuprofen Avatar

    Yesterday was much quieter, but we managed to fit in a visit from Nicki and Clemmie, who enjoyed capering with her cousines.

  9. inderal Avatar

    PS I wonder how Blunkett would feel about the fact that this same person explained how she understood this way of using words by saying ÓitÒs the kind of thing Haider does in AustriaÔÅ

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    i lay there like a piece of meat, being seen to by a butcher with seven and a half fingers left.

  11. lamictal Avatar

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  12. levaquin Avatar

    Several hours later, Dangly came home from work & I’ll tell that story next time!

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    ItÒs the only time of the year I wish I had Sky to watch the whole terrible but unmissable award show live. We used to have Oscar parties to watch it all through the night!

  15. meridia Avatar

    And here is the message which started the discussion at Shaksper

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    ÓWant me to massage that?Ô sheÒd said, laying her hand two inches above the bunched pile of sheet at his crotch. Her voice cracked the quiet like a baseball hitting a window.

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    Instead Cup is all it’s cracked up to be, it seems

  18. nexium Avatar

    What is this country coming to when itÒs only old gits like us (no, heÒs no relation) who can be bothered to utter a voice of dissent every now and then?

  19. norco Avatar

    Think about that the next time you get off on a money shot.

  20. penicillin Avatar

    the only time the gentlemen of the youth group were interested in my knotting skills was when we were in competition with other youth groups.

  21. prevacid Avatar

    Staying with a poetic theme, here is something I wrote in college. As you can see, I have a rather warped sense of humor.

  22. ranitidine Avatar

    ItÒs simple but effective. They also do other genres. Adolescent poetry is worth a look.

  23. reglan Avatar

    ItÒs official now. Black people love ethnorotica. [LiveJournal]

  24. seroquel Avatar

    it was like he had me where he wanted me, so he could do anything he wanted to me, and yet he wasn’t that good at what he wanted to do.

  25. singulair Avatar

    I wish I had more to offer you than that.

  26. skelaxin Avatar

    My highbrow argument goes something like “Because of Joy King and Steve Orenstein, silly!”

  27. synthroid Avatar

    “Ok am I the only one dying to know what sweet pea just did??

  28. tylenol Avatar

    Actually, IÒve been back for a while now but too lazy to get back to writing anything here.

  29. ultracet Avatar

    Graphic Stories Ö No more than three pages per submission

  30. vioxx Avatar

    Just another lesson learned. A broken rule will come back and bite you in the ass in more ways than one!

  31. xanax Avatar

    I too let out a loud chuckle until I caught myself thinking “he might be serious”.

  32. zantac Avatar

    Damn, once again I was too disorganised to get myself ready in time for National Slacker Day

  33. zelnorm Avatar

    It was well worth the sleep deprivation.

  34. zocor Avatar

    “There are too many anal penetration shots,” she says.

  35. zyban Avatar

    You can see the rest of the column here.

  36. irritable Avatar

    access for his gift (although it’s kind of a selfish

  37. irritable-bowel-syndrome Avatar

    Those Friday Thing folk said that boobah is Ña bit oddÒ

  38. folic Avatar

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  39. lipitor-side-effects Avatar

    straight from the telegraph comment pages!

  40. tenuate Avatar

    I answered her questions, I just did not volunteer any further information.

  41. accutane Avatar

    I sit down at my desk and start writing the job description.

  42. Priya Shah Avatar

    Man, these spammers seem to get more “creative” by the day. They’ll be quoting from Shakespeare next

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