Metadata as source of digital anthropology

One of the most interesting things I am focused on right now is how to use the metadata that is increasingly abundant on web 2.0 sites. My main focus is tags on places like Flickr, and Technorati.

This form of tagging has the rather clumsy name of a folksonomy.

AFolksonomy is a system of classification derived from the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content; this practice is also known ascollaborative tagging,social classification,social indexing, andsocial tagging. Source: Wikipedia

These folksonomies give us a picture of the collective view, a summary of the zeitgeist, an understanding of the popular interpretation of meaning. There is personal meaning, and shared meaning. By looking at a tag such ashappiness on flickr you can explore the collective meaning of the word and associated tags clustered around it.

Continues @http://socialgraph.blogspot.com

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