Folksonomies - A New Venue for Viral Marketing

Viral marketing has found a new venue in “Folksonomies”.  This is the latest happening in the cyber world where people create and organize specific materials which they post and file online.  This is more popularly known as “tagging” or “folksonomies” (abbreviation for folks and taxonomy).  This could be a very effective setting for viral marketing as these contents are being shared globally.

This is how this practice operates.  Individuals have created sites for each content category where they can file their contents online accordingly.  Examples of such sites are del.icio.us which is a bookmark sharing site and Flickr, which is a photo sharing site.

For example, you can file your iPod pictures in a photo sharing site such as Flickr.  As soon as you do this, your photos will now be available for viewing not only by you but all of the members of the iPod community, who like you have also posted pictures under the iPod tag.  The number of individuals using this online filing system is certainly growing as in Flickr, pictures just solely for iPod number to about 3,500 already.

As tagging breaks down subjects into more specific categories, it makes for easier searching.  For example, if you want to research on the topic of “blogs” through Google, it will render you hundreds or sites, all indicating the word “blogs”.  Breaking down the subject into more specific sub topics such as “how to launch a blog” or “how to read a blog,” could make a user’s life easier through more efficient searching.  This is why more and more sites are jumping into the folksonomy bandwagon.

This is not to say that tagging is perfect tool but entrepreneurs could benefit from using it even just to have inkling to the state of clientele’s preferences.  You can use the RSS information for updates to ascertain if tagging is leading visitors to your site, product, service, company. Tagging gives you an access to the opinion of a representative group anytime without any fee.  The seller should use this tool with integrity, though.  They should present their real identities and their real purpose for posting their materials or links and to refrain from spamming.