Folksonomies : Diverse, Democratic and Evolving Classification Michael E. Ryan [email_address] @ryaninteractive UPA Boston User Experience Conference 2009

About Me

Where do you put this book in a taxonomy? (Takahashi, 2009)

Oreilly Media – Math? (O'Reilly Media, Inc., 2009)

Amazon’s classification What terms describe this book? (Amazon.com, 2009)

What terms describe this book?

What terms describe this book? Tags Amazon users have attached to this book (Amazon.com, 2009)

Tags Amazon users have attached to this book

What is a Folksonomy? The term “folksonomy” was created by Thomas Vander Wal on a listserve in July 2004. Term combines folk and taxonomy . “ Folksonomy is the result of personal free tagging of information and objects… for one's own retrieval… The value in this external tagging is derived from people using their own vocabulary and adding explicit meaning, which may come from inferred understanding of the information/object” (Vander Wal, 2007b)

The term “folksonomy” was created by Thomas Vander Wal on a listserve in July 2004. Term combines folk and taxonomy .

“ Folksonomy is the result of personal free tagging of information and objects… for one's own retrieval… The value in this external tagging is derived from people using their own vocabulary and adding explicit meaning, which may come from inferred understanding of the information/object”

Tagging Model Tagger > Tag > Object

Tagger > Tag > Object

Aggregation Tags are compiled in aggregation Finds most popular tags for an object Connects tags to multiple objects Finds most popular tags on a website Connects tags and objects by inference (Smith, 2008)

Tags are compiled in aggregation

Finds most popular tags for an object

Connects tags to multiple objects

Finds most popular tags on a website

Connects tags and objects by inference

Pivot browsing (Amazon.com, 2009) (Rosenfeld & Morville, 2007)

Search and Filter Users can add or subtract tags to filter results (Amazon.com, 2009) (Golder & Huberman, 2005)

Tag counts to rank popularity Number of people who tagged (Delicious, 2009)

Tag cloud (Flickr, 2009) (Rainie, 2007)

Exercise Assign tags (keywords) to these objects. These could be for everyone or just for you. (Amazon.com, 2009)

Assign tags (keywords) to these objects. These could be for everyone or just for you.

Amazon’s tags (Amazon.com, 2009)

How do people tag? Individual and Social retrieval Literal descriptive Personal abstract Personal categorization Social benefit (Golder & Huberman, 2005) (Vander Wal, 2007a) (Smith, 2008)

Individual and Social retrieval

Literal descriptive

Personal abstract

Personal categorization

Social benefit

Who is tagging? 2007 PEW Internet & American Life Project survey 28% of Americans (42 million) online have tagged 7% (10 million) tag daily. Americans who tag tend to be under 40 and have a higher education and income. Race/ethnicity of the taggers was reported as: 26% White, non-Hispanic 36% Black, non-Hispanic 33% English-speaking Hispanic (Rainie, 2007) (Vander Wal, 2007a)

2007 PEW Internet & American Life Project survey

28% of Americans (42 million) online have tagged

7% (10 million) tag daily.

Americans who tag tend to be under 40 and have a higher education and income.

Race/ethnicity of the taggers was reported as:

26% White, non-Hispanic

36% Black, non-Hispanic

33% English-speaking Hispanic

How businesses can use tagging Validate or identify gaps in a taxonomy Additional metadata enhances findability Encourage tagging by making it easy, fun & social (Trant, 2006) (Smith, 2008)

Validate or identify gaps in a taxonomy

Additional metadata enhances findability

Encourage tagging by making it easy, fun & social

Problems with tagging Messy metadata User-controlled vocabulary can help 2006 Trant study only needed to remove 6.7% of terms Problem decreases as tag usage grows (Trant, 2006) (Smith, 2008)

Messy metadata

User-controlled vocabulary can help

2006 Trant study only needed to remove 6.7% of terms

Problem decreases as tag usage grows

Tag abuse Give taggers as much freedom as possible to encourage use, but need to protect users from abuse Remove/disable expletives and hate speech Allow users to flag tags and taggers Spam Vocal Minority Negative Tagging (Smith, 2008)

Give taggers as much freedom as possible to encourage use, but need to protect users from abuse

Remove/disable expletives and hate speech

Allow users to flag tags and taggers

Spam

Vocal Minority

Negative Tagging

Negative Tagging Expect some negative tags for objects. Best to allow this as long as it is not abusive to users. (Amazon.com, 2009) (Smith, 2008)

Expect some negative tags for objects. Best to allow this as long as it is not abusive to users.

For more info Gene Smith - Tagging: People-powered metadata for the social web (voices that matter) www.personalinfocloud.com Thomas Vander Wal’s Blog [email_address] @ryaninteractive

Gene Smith - Tagging: People-powered metadata for the social web (voices that matter)

www.personalinfocloud.com Thomas Vander Wal’s Blog

[email_address] @ryaninteractive

Other Manga Guides (No Starch Press, 2009)

Thank You Questions?

Questions?

Appendix A: References Amazon.com. (2009). http://www.amazon.com Delicious. (2009). http://www.delicious.com/ Flickr. (2009). http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/ Golder, S. & Huberman, B. A. (2005) The structure of collaborative tagging systems. Technical report, In-formation Dynamics Lab, HP Labs. http://arxiv.org/ftp/cs/papers/0508/0508082.pdf No Starch Press (2009) http://nostarch.com/manga/ O'Reilly Media, Inc. (2009). http://oreilly.com/pub/topic/math Rainie, L. (2007). 28% of online Americans have used the Internet to tag content. http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Tagging.pdf Rosenfeld, L., & Morville, P. (2007). Information architecture for the World Wide Web (3rd ed.). Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly. Smith, G. (2008). Tagging: People-powered metadata for the social web (voices that matter) Berkeley, CA: New Riders. Takahashi, S. (2009). The manga guide to statistics. San Francisco: No Starch Press. Trant, J. (2006). Social classification and folksonomy in art museums: Early data from the steve.museum tagger prototype. In Proceedings of the 17th SIG Classification Research Workshop, 2006. http://www.archimuse.com/papers/asist-CR-steve-0611.pdf Vander Wal, T. (2007a, January 31). Pew research on tagging. Personal InfoCloud. http://www.personalinfocloud.com/2007/01/pew_research_on.html Vander Wal, T. (2007b, February 2). Folksonomy coinage and definition. Off the Top. http://vanderwal.net/folksonomy.html

Amazon.com. (2009). http://www.amazon.com

Delicious. (2009). http://www.delicious.com/

Flickr. (2009). http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/

Golder, S. & Huberman, B. A. (2005) The structure of collaborative tagging systems. Technical report, In-formation Dynamics Lab, HP Labs. http://arxiv.org/ftp/cs/papers/0508/0508082.pdf

No Starch Press (2009) http://nostarch.com/manga/

O'Reilly Media, Inc. (2009). http://oreilly.com/pub/topic/math

Rainie, L. (2007). 28% of online Americans have used the Internet to tag content. http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Tagging.pdf

Rosenfeld, L., & Morville, P. (2007). Information architecture for the World Wide Web (3rd ed.). Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly.

Smith, G. (2008). Tagging: People-powered metadata for the social web (voices that matter) Berkeley, CA: New Riders.

Takahashi, S. (2009). The manga guide to statistics. San Francisco: No Starch Press.

Trant, J. (2006). Social classification and folksonomy in art museums: Early data from the steve.museum tagger prototype. In Proceedings of the 17th SIG Classification Research Workshop, 2006. http://www.archimuse.com/papers/asist-CR-steve-0611.pdf

Vander Wal, T. (2007a, January 31). Pew research on tagging. Personal InfoCloud. http://www.personalinfocloud.com/2007/01/pew_research_on.html

Vander Wal, T. (2007b, February 2). Folksonomy coinage and definition. Off the Top. http://vanderwal.net/folksonomy.html