This coined word is made up of the words ‘folk’ and ‘taxonomy’. It is aptly named for its attributes. It defines a people generated system of classification or tagging which we are asked to examine in this assignment for Library 2.0. I have had an account in del.icio.us and find it a useful way to store favourite sites. It is also useful as a search tool because the tags which people have used can bring on a new meaning to your original search. Sociologically, it is interesting to let your category take on a new meaning because you learn how people think. Mind you, sometimes this can be irritating, as the tags you find are idiosyncratic and meaningless. Some are subjective and very casual and can almost take you away from your initial search when you are trying to focus on a specific search. I also subsribe to digg, another tagging social content site, which is very similar to del-icio.us in that the ranking system of favourite sites is controlled by the users. Both del.icio.us and digg are dependent upon numbers next to the posts on their pages and these are like popularity votes. I haven’t compared the two in great length as yet. I like the button for del.icio.us and have found the convenience of having it on my browser at work and at home and it is a great feature to have and a quick way to bookmark a site.
I use Flickr to view family photos but have never posted on it. Here is a cool photo. It is great to be able to search by tags in Flickr. Apparently you can make scrapbooks using your photos too, by using categories such as events, or by date or subjects and so on. This is an exciting possibility.
