Folksonomies

Taxonomies are those arbitrary classifications you find in science, and in other fields.

But Web 2.0 has created this neologism, the folksonomy. Just as folklore denotes popular wisdom, the word folksonomy denotes the way the people classify things.

Something very natural for bloggers is to classify their writing into categories, and technorati turns them into TAGs, which are labels for grouping the topics explored by thousands of bloggers around the world.

My favorite example of a folksonomy is that innovative service called del.icio.us, the biggest folksonomy I know of.

In Web 2.0 it’s the people who classify, not the search engines, like Yahoo, for example. And folksonomies have an added bonus: they let us increase the flow of readers to our blogs.

So here’s a tip: want more visitors? Sign up for del.icio.us and start classifying your “greatest hits”.