The rise in social networks and their power over the information on the Internet has sprung another phenomenon: “Folksonomies”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy. Folksonomy is a word coined by “Thomas Vander Wal”:http://www.vanderwal.net/about.php, an online pioneer studying information structure and combines the words ‘taxonomy’ with ‘folks’. A simple definition is that folksonomies are classifications defined by people. The implications of folksonomies are much more complex.
In the beginning of folksonomies, collaborative tagging efforts by people were simple. If you posted an entry on your blog about marketing, you would classify it marketing, if you were writing on knitting, you would classify it knitting. However, with the popularity of social software like “del.icio.us”:http://del.icio.us, “Flickr”:http://www.flickr.com and the blog search engine “Technorati”:http://www.technorati.com growing, tagging systems have become much more complex and layered. Now, if you post an entry on your blog about marketing, you might classify it as “marketing, online, emarketing, collaborative” in order to encompass a more defined description of your post.
How does this effect your business blog, then? Online marketing includes the ability to tie into these social networks. What is the sense of posting to a blog that nobody reads? In order to increase traffic, you have to interact effectively with the blogosphere. Tagging is one of the ways to do this.
Category: Tara Hunt
Blogs, wikis, folksonomies, social networks, citizen journalists, photo sharing, file sharing, MP3 sharing, collaborative technology and napsterization – there seems to be a trend here. Online technology is centering on the exchange of data and information.
On “PostSecret”:http://postsecret.blogspot.com, people share their deepest, darkest secrets. On “Flickr”:http://www.flickr.com, people share their photos. On “LinkedIn”:http://www.linkedin.com, people share their business contacts. Pretty soon, there won’t be anything that remains unshared.
Traditional business isn’t about sharing. It’s about signing non-disclosure documents and protecting information. Any information that is to be made publicly available is carefully combed over by PR reps and then double-checked by corporate lawyers. Patents provide another barrier to protect information: the public has access, but can’t use it. Information can be sold, too. Newspapers now charge for online subscriptions. Business models for many information providers rely on paid subscriptions. It would be ludicrous to give it away.
Or would it?
In the past week, I’ve been struck by two very strong examples of how the blogosphere is reshaping business communications drastically.
In the first case, a previous silence was broken and so was the strength of the story that led as an example of a company who ignored the blogosphere at its own peril.
The second case demonstrates a company who is either unaware of the power of the voices within the blogosphere, or who knows the power and believes that threats can silence it nonetheless.
Case #1: Kryptonite – A Positive Example
Nearly a year ago, Engadget, a popular gadget blog revealed that “Kryptonite locks could be easily picked with a ballpoint pen”:http://www.engadget.com/entry/7796925370303347/. Although the company issued official press releases on the subject and offered to replace the tubular locks in question without cost to owners, their lack of interaction with the blogosphere made it appear as if Kryptonite didn’t respond at all. The result was that the Kryptonite story has been used as the ‘warning’ for companies not recognizing the importance of the blogosphere since that time. This is not likely the story Kryptonite wants to tell.