Two cultures of fauxonomies collide… (via David)
Discusses, basically, how tag usage evolves and how different people tag differently.
“At a really grand level, if you can imagine a one hundred year tag-cloud around a gay novel, then it might start with lots of people using the tag invert, with this gradually giving way to homosexual, then gay and potentially after that, queer.”
That’s all pretty interesting, but things get much more exciting when we starting thinkig about other languages and really different cultures.
I wrote about tag namespaces before: “tag “namespacesâ€? will develop, somewhat mirroring languages, but also other social groups like interest groups, specialist communities.”
In other words, different communities develop their own categories and language, and this will be reflected in their tag use. We might even be able to infer communities from commonalities in tag use.
See also “Tagclouds and cultural changes“, which talks about the spreading of the ‘Ajax’ concept.