A Study On Tag-based Folksonomy On The Internet

Along with the recent trends of the masses'joining the Internet and the grass roots'gaining power on the Internet, there is a new kind of information organization methods emerging in those young and popular Internet services such as Del.icio.us and Flickr, which is named"Folksonomy". This newborn information organization tool is purely developed and used by the ordinary and end users of the Internet, the masses, which allows the users to explicitly state the meanings or properties of the information or content created and shared by themselves in their own languages, through adding"tags"to the information items. It helps the users to find and share information resources, such as pictures, videos and blog articles.Folksonomy shows the ideas of share and collaboration on the Internet and it is a special information organization method under the new information environment of the Internet. Folksonomy provides new clues for the improvement of information organization and retrieval on the Internet, and it also forms new study subjects for Information Science.As a new information organization method, what kind of users and information is Folksonomy intended to serve? How does it meet the needs of information organization and retrieval on the Internet? What unique properties and functions does it have? In order to answer these questions, author of this paper have chosen Folksonomy as a study object, and discussed the meanings of this concept, some basic theories as well as instances of its application.As Folksonomy is a newborn phenomenon and concept, researches on it are still at the first stage. Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is to discuss basic theories of Folksonomy, by analyzing its characteristics, functions and mechanisms, from the stand of information organization and retrieval.Based on comprehensively investigating and reviewing the related work done by former researchers, this paper begins with retrospecting the origin and history of Folksonomy, and summarizes its major areas of application. Then the meanings, characteristics, types and functions of Folksonomy are discussed in detail. Next, theoretic researches are carried out with regard to three aspects: the specific environment for a Folksonomy to develop and work, the mechanisms supporting a Folksonomy to function effectively, and the differences and relationships between Folksonomy and other information (or knowledge) organization methods. Finally, an instance study based on a Chinese blog service provider, Blogbus, is implemented, which substantiates the statement that Folksonomy follows the Power Law, and also comes to several conclusions about the characteristics of Chinese Folksonomy as well as the common ground and differences between Chinese and English Folksonomy.