Why did I build this blog now? To demonstrate the power of tagging and of folksonomy as an enterprise collaboration and communication tool. There are several key parts of this integration picture that have finally come together (at least for me).

The first element is the growth of tagging – the ability of users to assign key words to objects that they place in a repository. Tagging allows users to mark URLs in del.icio.us with keywords that describe those URLs. Tagging allows users to mark photo that they upload into Flickr with key words. Tagging allows bloggers to mark their entries with key words that Technorati will capture. All this tagging builds a folksonomy – a taxonomy of the people, by the people for the people.

The second element is the growth of simple HTML, REST or RSS interfaces. Many of these interfaces have guess-able formats. If you want to get a list of all of my objects (URLs with descriptions and tags) from del.icio.us, you enter in the URL http://del.icio.us/jimphelps. If you want to see just those objects that have to do with folksonomy, you enter http://del.icio.us/jimphelps/folksonomy. Pretty easy to guess to the rest. The interfaces that Flickr, Technorati and del.icio.us expose are very simple to use. This means that people have started building cool stuff against these interfaces.

The third element is the open source movement around these services. Many people are developing code that leverages these various services. The code is out there and available for use, expansion and adaption.

Those key elements let me construct this blog as a demonstration application of the power of folksonomy and integration element in enterprise communication and collaboration.

{JJP}