on classification and social networks

Occassionally I come across terms that I am not familiar with in the least. Take for instance folksonomy. This term I came across while researching my current paper on the photo sharing application flickr and online social networks. It's an interesting term to be sure, referring to "an emergent individual/local or small group taxonomy with no imposed hierarchy, pick list (lexicon) or term control. Users apply their own (free) terms aka tags to digital objects (pictures, links)."

The relevance of the term to social networking is a little unclear at first. But folksonomy (or tagging as we lay persons may call it) in flickr is the most basic way that networks are formed. All three of the photos are from the flickr site (two are from my photostream, one is from my friend's photostream) and each have been abitrarily tagged with terms that have some basic reference to the subject or theme of the photographs. Some are tagged with sun, portrait, sunset, shadow, etc. (I think you get the idea...). Anyhow, all the other photos on flickr that share any of the same tags are grouped in a pool that you can view by simply clicking on the tag. Voila... there's a simple explanation of how folksonomy relates to social networks.

Obviously my research paper will explore this term in a lot more depth. But after neglecting the BAAC blog for many months (although I feel no guilt) I felt like making a couple posts for any of the lost souls out there to read and ponder. Comment if you would like, or click on any of the photos that I've posted here to browse the wonderful world that is flickr. If you haven't experienced flickr yet, you don't know what you are missing.

For more about folksonomy... go here:

• Social Classification