Folksonomy

Metadata is the term used for data about data. This type of data has been created and defined by those who are highly knowledgable in an area of expertise. Folkonomy is a type of metadata. However, unlike metadata, which is created by experts, folksonomy is created by regular people. Sites like Wikipedia and Flickr, that are maintained by everyday users, are infact a type of folkonomy. Users are giving their take on the definition of something so that others may come and use that definition along with the definition left by others to come to their own conclution about a topic.

This type of data is useful to organizations and to the world because the definitions given by nonprofessionals seems to be more easy to understand. This makes that defintion more desirable to consumers when they go to an orginizations website to do research on a product. Also a consumer might feel more comfortable with a definition of a product that has been made by another consumer rather than by the company, because companies seem to juice up their defintions of a product in order to get more sales. A definition created by another consumer would be more honest.

Chris gives the best and most clearly defined definitions for Metadata and Folkonomy. Meghan makes a good case about William Gibson's opinion about the internet, and his contribution to folkonomy. Alexis also has some goo insight on the topic of Folksonomy.