Folksonomies: Indexing and Retrieval in Web 2.0

One of the defining principles of Web 2.0 when it first emerged was that the collective intelligence of users should be harnessed in order to enrich services for that user community (O’Reilly, 2005). This so-called ‘network effect’ principle remains as central to the Web 2.0 thesis then as it does five years on (O’Reilly and Battelle, 2009). Folksonomies, or collaborative tagging systems, have become the epitome of the network effect; using collective intelligence to organise and retrieve information on the Web. In Folksonomies: indexing and retrieval in Web 2.0, author Isabella Peters explores the use of folksonomies in ‘collaborative information services’, a catch-all term used by Peters to encompass the heterogeneous nature of the Web 2.0 services that use tagging systems. The stated purpose of Folksonomies is to provide a degree of insight into folksonomy applications, as well as discuss their strengths, weaknesses and how their problems can be ameliorated by applying recognised information retrieval models and formal knowledge representation methods.