Digital Directions: The Semantic Web
• Folksonomies: In the current Web 2.0 era, communities of users dynamically submit content to share with others on the Web. The user creates and assigns labels to the content. These labels, or “tags,” describe the subject matter and help connect it with other content. This is similar in principal to the application of tags within the Semantic Web model, with an important distinction: The Semantic Web only uses tags from a standard taxonomy of terms, a “controlled vocabulary.” Web 2.0 tags are typically user-defined, uncontrolled and are referred to as being within a “folksonomy.” A folksonomy is inexact because one user’s tags will likely not correspond with another’s. Folksonomies, therefore, cannot be used efficiently by software. A person is still required to interpret them. Like search results, folksonomies are “fuzzy,” but sometimes “fuzzy” is good enough.