Oh no, we’ve been tagged
July 9th, 2008 | by admin | 204 views
Folksonomies are great. In my view, they provide a richer way of sharing and finding information as you don’t need to understand how the organisational structure for a set of information works in order to do so.
[ For anyone who doesn't know, a folksonomy is a classification (or tagging) system created on the fly by "everyone" as they tag something using terms that they personally associate with the data being tagged. As opposed to a taxonomy, which is typically created in whole up front by a subject matter expert, and then given to people to select from when tagging data. ]
Folksonomies are very web 2.0, and often used on the web wherever there is data to be tagged (flickr, blogs, youtube, LastFM, etc.) And tagging is encouraged, all in the spirit of sharing.
One place where they are used is on del.icio.us - there they are used to tag websites.
OK, so where is this leading you might ask - if you’ve bothered to read this far. Well, here I am, sitting at home waiting to head off to an interview.
I did the usual stuff of googling the organisation concerned, checking out their (awful) web site - yet another which fails validation tests. Then I thought I’d search for them on del.icio.us and see how they’d been tagged by people on the web.
I also searched for some of my previous employers, just out of interest. First, here are the tags that came up for them:
PwC - advertising business internet vc research media online statistics pwc stats
(hmmm, no tags for consultants, accountants or auditors. And “advertising”??)
Next up, Conchango -scrum agile development .net blog design agency blogs methodology
Yep, that all looks quite reasonable.
Now, to the rather large retailer I am off to meet with.
finance money and banking cyprus environment plastic bags
If I was this organisation’s PR department, I’d be scratching my head given the amount of money spent on advertising over the past year or so.
Environment and plastic bags, interesting……….. do they know? Maybe I’ll ask at the interview 
