23 Musings

E-consultancy.com has a blog post about a recent YouGov survey which asked people what words used on the web were most likely to make them 'wince, shudder or want to bang your head on the keyboard' (pretty extreme reactions to words if you ask me).

The results are below:

1. folksonomy
2. blogosphere
3. blog
4. netiquette
5. blook
6. webinar
7. vlog
8. social network
9. cookie
10. wiki, podcast and avatar
    

I'm a bit flummoxed! Who did they ask, a load of people who've never heard of these words or didn't understand them I'd bet. Folksonomy is an excellent word but only really makes sense if you understand taxonomy and it's meaning. Also, some of these words have been around for years, so why ask? All seems a bit pointless to me!

According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, the use of tagging is growing fast among US web users. The December 2006 survey has found that 28% of internet users have tagged or categorized content online such as photos, news stories or blog posts. On a typical day online, 7% of internet users say they tag or categorize online content.

Tagging has always had this perception that it's a step towards a semantic (read more intelligent) way to traverse the web, but in reality it is proving a common sense approach to cutting and dicing information to make it easier to manage/find. Although it does have it's detractors who say tagging is too simple, I'm of the opinion that it's an incredibly useful tool when used correctly. Roll on the day when all content management systems come with a built in folksonomy function!