Mixing Taxonomies and Folksonomies: A Recipe for Disaster or Clarity?

I read an interesting ebook yesterday titled The Taxonomy Folksonomy Cookbook by Daniela Barbosa of the Dow Jones Enterprise Media Group.  She's a product manager working with the taxonomy and metadata management tool Synaptica.  In this "cookbook" Barbosa argues that companies should use both taxonomies (created top-down with rigid rules) and folksonomies (created from the top-up with flexible rules) to organize their data.

One place where we see folksonomies in play is on social bookmarking sites like Delicious (now sans awkward periods).

Basically, Barbosa argues that folksonomies help create data structures that are easier for a company's employees to use when searching for specific data.  Used in concert with taxonomies, folksonomies can help logically organize data in a flexible manner that creates additional ways to search and sort data.  It's a good read.

A major point of the ebook is that companies should not fret too much about creating rules for their folksonomies to avoid unruly systems.  Barbosa argues that administrators can edit tags, delete offensive ones, create synonyms and aliases, etc.  Further, the existing taxonomy can place tags with multiple meanings in proper context.  Is "mouse" an animal or computer input device?  When the taxonomy for that data item alludes to hardware, then mouse is associated with computers.

I can see how too many rules imposed on a folksonomy can impair its robustness.  If individuals are forced to use tags that are not natural to them, a company might as well stick with its taxonomy.  However, I reckon that companies should institute some basics tagging rules to help their folksonomies function well.

Some issues that rules should address are:

• Standardization of capitalization ("Daniela" vs. "daniela")
• Multiple words in tags ("mouse pad" vs. "mouse-pad" vs. "mousepad")
• Language (an issue for multi-national corporations)
• Use of numbers ("eight" vs. "8")
• Formatting ("080808" vs. "August 8, 2008")

Many tagging sites already have some of these rules.  For instance, on several occasions I have typed in a multi-word tags on a site that said to separate tags by commas only to have the first word in each tag actually used.  Thus, no spaces in tags on those sites.

Now, if you feel so inclined, what do you think?  Would rules like this hinder the robustness of a folksonomy since they could force individuals to think unnaturally?  If not, what are some other useful rules?

The Show Must Go On…

About two weeks ago, National Public Radio canceled one of its newest programs — The Bryant Park Project, which ended its run last Friday.  I've been following this show since its piloting stage.

The BPP, as it was commonly known as, had a strong social media component with an active staff blog, Twitter feeds (one staffer even tweeted every mile during a marathon he ran), and an active Facebook presence.  According to the New York Times, the BPP met NPR's online expectations but a lack of station carriage coupled with a $2 million a year budget led to the cancellation as NPR faces rough economic waters.

Due to the fact that a large number of people found the show through NPR's website or through its podcast, they were sad to see the show go since the show's site and podcast were doing well.  However, this web audience has helped the show continue through a new niche social networking site for the show's community named The BPP Diner.  It was started a day or so before the the show's final episode; social media consultant Rob Paterson, who has advised NPR and followed the BPP, set it up using Ning-powered software.

A few days into its creation, the network is growing, and its members are interacting with each as they mourn the ending of the show.  In fact, Tricia Mckinney, who was an editor on the show, has remained active on the site and has even posted web videos of her continuing the show's daily segment "The Most," which discussed the most popular news stories on the Internet.  Other former staff members are also actively participating on the site.

It'll be interesting to see how long the BPP community continues to thrive on this niche social network.  Further, it would be even more interesting if the top brass at NPR follow it as well.  Perhaps they'll better understand the power of social media.

SEO and Selective Attraction

Yesterday I streamed a recorded webinar from MarketingProfs titled "Beyond Trade Show Metrics: Improving Your Event Marketing ROI," conducted by Skip Cox is CEO of Exhibit Surveys, Inc.  This interested me since we had a booth at the Personal Democracy Forum for ImpactWatch last month.

During the webinar Cox discussed the concept of selective attraction.  This is basically a smarty pants way of describing the importance of attracting the trade show attendees who are the most interested and in most need of the product that an exhibit is pitching.  These people are much more likely to purchase the product or service than other attendees, and devoting time to someone who isn't interested is a waste of time when a potential client is left alone.

This makes sense since, considering our recent experience, not everyone who is attending a politics and technology conference is interested and/or in need of a media monitoring program.  For instance, I met plenty of great folks at our ImpactWatch booth, but some didn't need what we offer.  However, I hope we attracted the people who were interested in our product.

So how am I going to tie trade show exhibit metrics and search engine optimization together?

Well, selective attraction is also an important concept in SEO.  For example, we may optimize the ImpactWatch site to rank high for searches for a general keyword like "news," but a very small portion of these searchers are interested in a media monitoring product.  Perhaps they simply want to know how the stock market is doing or what Punxsutawney Phil did on Groundhog Day, not reputation management. 

Thus, it sometimes is wasteful to invest in ranking well for a general keyword.  That's why the long tail of search is an important factor to consider.  Although focusing on appropriate long tail keywords may attract fewer site visitors, if a greater portion of site visitors is coming from a more niche term are likely to convert from a visitor to a customer, that is a better practice — especially since it is probably less competitive to rank well for a niche term.  

To learn more read our SEO Basics white paper; we discuss selective attraction in the keyword section.

Talking about SEO in the Real World

In many ways, I've learned more while explaining a concept than I do reading or listening about it.  That's why it is always intriguing to explain Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to someone who doesn't work in the realm of web development. 

Over the weekend, I was explaining SEO to a librarian I know. During this conversation I was trying to explain the field to her in terms that I assume she would understand.

For example, I explained that a search engine is like a librarian whom people approach to find the most relevant information about a topic.  In the case of search engines, people ask by using a keyword.  Then the search engine provides a list of sites in order of relevance.

To do this, I explained, that search engines gauge many factors of each information source that a librarian must also consider.  These factors include: the age of the source, who cites (links to it on the Internet) it, how often it is updated, etc. 

During this discussion she mentioned something that intrigued me.  Librarians, like us all, need to conscientiously work to avoid providing biased information.  For instance, a patron may ask a librarian for a book about the librarian's religion, and the librarian may feel compelled to refer the patron a book written by someone who sheds a positive light upon the religion.  Whether this is truly the best book or not, the librarian must refrain from unduly emphasizing one factor of relevance over others.

Likewise, search engines must also work to avoid providing biased information.  This was the case years ago when they weren't as selective with the link factor when assessing a site's relevance.  Many web developers would create virtually useless sites to a human that were chock full of links (aka "link farms") to sites that they were trying to get ranked well.  The search engines eventually became more discriminating when assessing links to prevent such manipulation so that they could provide less biased results to those who used them to search for information.

Although I've understood the concept of link farms before my discussion with my friend, her comments helped me understand SEO in a better way.  Thus, I would suggest to anyone to explain the complexities of their field to someone else.  It helps.

Fix My Street!

I had a great time at the Personal Democracy Forum earlier this week since I met wonderful people and learned about interesting projects.

The whole point behind PDF is to discuss how technology can help individuals participate in the political/governing process and improve governments' ability to serve their citizens.  While attending the Design Principles for Online Democracy panel discussion, Tom Steinberg of mySociety in the UK discussed various projects that his organizations have done for the British government. 

In my opinion, the coolest project so far is fixmystreet.com.  On this site people living in Britain can report sections of road that need repairs or attention.  These problems can run the gamut from potholes to "fly tipping" (Brit-speak for "littering").  Local governments can then use this site to determine where they need to deploy their employees to make repairs or correct problems.  Further, this site allows the public to make sure that the problems reported are corrected.

I think that this is a marvelous idea.  This site enables citizens to work directly with their local governments to ensure that important tasks are accomplished, and that makes fixmystreet.com a great example of what PDF is trying to accomplish — use technology to improve government.