Flickr

In the matter of folksonomies and social communities and software there is one service which I find particularly interesting. Flickr is an online photo album where users are encouraged to upload there photographs or other images. Every user gets his, or her, own personal album, but at the same time, the whole site works as a huge collaboratively managed context of photographs. As well as one can upload photographs, Flickr also gives the user the possibility to interact with other users and photographs. This is for me a development aiming towards enhanced interaction and communication possibilities. As people add comments to each others photographs they may exchange experiences and interests. Even though one does not have a great interest in photography to become a user and to upload photographs I think it is an excellent example of a social service where people may combine their hobby with socializing with other professional and non-professional photographs.

What I still think is particularly interesting with this service is the tagging- commenting possibilities. There have been some doubts when it comes to free tagging, but I argue that it is a positive development that, also, aims towards a more interactive solution when browsing and searching. Thanks to the tagging system users can search more specifically than in pre-decided tags. Of course it may also lead to complete misleading, and the number of tags will probably never end. Although there are some doubts with this tagging system I like it and believe that it will become more frequent as time goes.

I am not completely sure what people use this service but when visiting the web site I get the impression that many different kinds of people are registered to Flickr. Even though what kind of social group one belongs to in real life, one might find other groups in this photo community. I believe that the user is brought into different groups depending on interests and coincidences as in everything else. There might be groups of people who like to take photos of certain objects.

Flickr might relate to the other sites, but is at the same time quite unique. There are numerous online photo albums, but Flickr has come to be one of the most used ones. The combination of a personal photo album along with the interactive community makes up a certain kind of folksonomy. One can, besides tagging their own photos, also tag other’s photographs for personal purposes, such as enhancing one’s own searching process.

I can not see any dangers with this system. As said the tagging system might be a problem for some, but otherwise I, out of my experiences, argue that Flickr is a popular site whose purpose has led it into the world of Web 2.0.