A folksonomy is a system of classification derived from the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content[1]; this practice is also known as collaborative tagging, social classification, social indexing, and social tagging.[citation needed]
The word folksonomy is a portmanteau of folk and taxonomy.
Folksonomies became popular on the Web around 2004[2] as part of social software applications such as social bookmarking and annotating photographs. Tagging, which is characteristic of Web 2.0 services,[citation needed] allows users to collectively classify and find information. Some websites include tag clouds as a way to visualize tags in a folksonomy.
