Explore Usage Features Of Tags In Folksonomy

In social tagging system, users associate tags with resources consistently,forming a lot of valuable data. These tagging behaviors not only establish linksbetween users and resources, resource and tags, users and the tags, but also form aternary network of users-resources-tagsμ, which is a typical complex dynamicnetwork. Exploring the topological features, statistical properties and evolutionarymechanisms of the complex dynamic network, will help us recognize and learn moreabout the multi-node structure, evolution, function of social tagging system from themacro level. Combined with the National Natural Science Fund Project Research ontheories of slow·and quick·combined knowledge extensible optimization and sharingin knowledge supernetwork environmentμ(project NO.:71071144) and ZhejiangProvince Natural Science Fund Project Research on evolution and response of onlinepublic opinion from perspective in complex network theoryμ(project NO.:Y6110332),this paper explores usage features and regularities of tags in folksonomy, helps usunderstand the purpose and the way that tags are used, resources are collected, so thatmaking better use of social tagging system to support organization, management,sharing and mining of information resources.Firstly, this paper definines the concept of social tagging system andhypernetwork, summarizes related researches. On this basis, the hypernetwork forfolksonomy is constructed, in which the tagging behavior is defined as a hyperedgeand usually a hyperedge is consisted of one user, one resource and one or more tags.Secondly, the analysis model of social tagging is constructed. In reference oftopological quantites of complex networks, some structural features of hypernetworkfor folksonomy are defined, such as hyperdegree and its distribution, excess averagehyperdegree and conditional probability distribution. Meanwhile, the hyperdegree ofuser represents the numbers that user tags, the hyperdegree of resource represents thenumbers that resource being tagged, the hyperdegree of tag represents the numbersthat tag being used. Finally, an empirical study is carried out to explore usage features and regularities of tags in folksonomy with the data from Delicious by dividing users,resources, tags according to users· activeness, resources· awareness and tags·popularity. The empirical results show:○1Users consistently tag, import newindividual tags, and generally use multiple individual tags with one or few populartags together to annotate a resource in folksonomy.○2The usage of different populartags is different in terms of the difference of users· activeness and resources·awareness.Users with high activeness are inclined to use individual tags to annotate aresource. When resources are payed little awareness or numerous awareness, users arealso inclined to use individual tags. The empirical results are further explained fromthe functions and usage purposes of tags. Moreover, some revelations and suggestionsfor users and service providers of social tagging system are given.