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Folksonomies | Power to the People

April 26, 2006

Theresa RegliDirector, Content Management

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Simple Truth | People see the world differently

SAND TRAP BUNKER

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Simple Truth | Words evoke multiple meanings

BREAKFAST

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Taxonomy• Law for categorizing information

Meta Data and/or Content Attributes• Information about content: "data about the data Synonym Ring:

A set of words/phrases that can be used interchangeably for searching. (Hypertension, high blood pressure)

Thesaurus• A tool that controls synonyms and identifies the relationships

among terms

Controlled Vocabulary• A list of preferred and variant terms, with relationships

(hierarchical and associative) defined

Accounting for differences for this in the CM world

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Sample Taxonomy | Dewey Decimal

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A) General WorksB) Philosophy, Psychology, ReligionC) History: Auxiliary SciencesD) History: General and Old WorldE) History: United StatesF) History: Western HemisphereG) Geography, Anthropology, RecreationH) Social ScienceJ) Political ScienceK) Law

L) EducationM) MusicN) Fine ArtsP) Literature & LanguagesQ) ScienceR) MedicineS) AgricultureT) TechnologyU) Military ScienceV) Naval ScienceZ) Bibliography & Library Science

While both taxonomies are used in libraries,note how the differences in classification are specifically accommodating:

• Audience• Subject matter

Sample Taxonomy | Library of Congress

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• Faceted taxonomies allow users to narrow down and select based on very granular attributes

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Why Tag? R3 | Right Content, Right User, Right Time™

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Financial Advisor

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Retirement Plan Sponsor / TPA

Institutional & Retail Investor

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Support

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• Taxonomies are top-down, dictatorial, “expertly”-determined classification schemes with variable flexibility

• Though invaluable in the CMS realm, taxonomies are rarely exhaustive or encompassing of many individuals’ perspectives on content

• Folksonomies give “Power to the People” to tag and retrieve content to their liking, and share that approach/perspective with others

• But with such freedom come many drawbacks• Folksonomies are more anarchistic than democratic

Taxonomy Backlash

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• Folksonomy: the anti-controlled vocabulary. Collaborative, user-driven vocabularies for tagging content, rarely with any sort of control

• Portmanteau of the words “folks” and “taxonomy”• Method of labeling and organizing data by collaborative

tagging• Arise in Web-based communities where technology

exists that allow users to create and use tags• Generally applied to the labeling and sharing of user-

generated or collaboratively-created existing content, such as blogs

• Relevance between meta data and content may be determined by users in a democratic fashion• four users define an object as being ‘green' • one user defines an object as being ‘aqua' • relevance can be defined as "more green than aqua”• derived by the user-defined meta tags

Folksonomy Basics

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Folksonomy Example | Flickr

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Folksonomy Example | Flickr

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Hey, you, get off of my cloud…

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• Social networking software: applications that connect friends, business partners, or other individuals together using a variety of tools• MySpace, LinkedIn • Folksonomies facilitate social networking

• One of many technologies that allow users to “take over” and be the master of their domains• Wikis, RSS, blogs, faceted browsing

• Collabularies: yet another portmanteau combining “collaborative” and “vocabulary” (sounds like another word for “language” to me!)

Folksonomy roots and related trends

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Folksonomy Disadvantages

Meta noise: inaccurate or irrelevant meta data

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• Meta noise is prevalent in systems not based on a controlled vocabulary, such as meta data defined by users in a folksonomy

• Examples:• Case insensitive (chinese vs. Chinese)• Incorrectly spelled tags (blu instead of blue) • Singular vs. plural (cat vs. cats)• Lack of hierarchy (cheese & Roquefort tag at the same

level)• Tags which are loosely unrelated (frog on a content

object featuring only a lilly pad)

Folksonomy Disadvantages

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• On systems open to large user groups, esoteric tags which are understood by a only minority of users tend to proliferate• burdens users• decreases system efficiency

• Core to folksonomies are the flaws that formal classification systems are designed to eliminate, such as redundancy, misspelling, etc.

• Taxonomists/ontologists (this one included) argue that an agreed-to set of tags enables more efficient indexing and searching of content

Folksonomy Disadvantages

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Simple Truths

• The universe has a natural tendency towards chaos• Human beings naturally seek to make order out of that

chaos• Chaos theory purports that there is order to be found in

every chaotic “pattern”

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Making order of chaos

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Making order of chaos

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Making order of chaos?

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• Often, users can discover & befriend folksonomy tag creators• Lower content categorization costs

• No hierarchically organized nomenclature to learn• Users simply create and apply tags on the fly

• Inherently open-ended (some consider this a disadvantage)• Can respond quickly to changes and whims of users• Like open source software, wikis and blogs, this creates an

environment of adaptability and innovation • Tags are generated by people who have spent more time interacting

with the content than taxonomists or ontologists have • Highly personalized

• Users can tag with whatever they want, when they want• Encouraging

• Users immediately see the results of their influence on the system• Minority views/opinions/perspectives don’t get squashed out

It’s not all bad | Folksonomy Advantages

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• Folksonomy may be one of the keys to developing a truly Semantic Web, where every online object contains machine-readable meta data that describes its content

• Not only would search engine precision improve, but a more relevant web of related information could be enabled

• The challenge is the governing structure that would keep tags consistent, and the willingness of people to tag things

Key to the Semantic Web?

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• Consider a moderated / edited folksonomy, supported by a taxonomy framework• Create clusters and hierarchies based on user tags• Eliminate / merge redundant tags• Flickr is a great example

• Give users tagging guidelines• User research and analysis should be the foundation of

any taxonomy design process• This will minimize the need for folksonomy

• Folksonomy functionality is great for blogs – allowing users to tag their entries on the fly based on any new topic they wish

The best of both worlds

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R3 | Right Content, Right User, Right Time™

Pro

duct

sFo

rms

& A

pps

Pric

es &

Rat

es

Abo

ut U

sE

duca

tion

& P

lann

ing

Financial Advisor

Institutional Consultant

Financial Analyst

Retirement Plan Sponsor / TPA

Institutional & Retail Investor

Attract

Engage

Convert

Support

Renew

© 2006 Molecular

Copyright © 2006 Molecular, Inc. | www.molecular.com 26

Discussion / Q&A

Thank you!Feel free to e-mail me:

tregli@molecular.com

or visit

www.molecular.com

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