I had some thoughts this morning about how to abuse the whole folkonomy trend. Concerns really, because I’m not sure these things haven’t already happened:
- Ideological wars fought through tagging. Tag your opponent as “evil” or “wrong”, “liberal” or “conservative” and have an army of information manipulators spread the tags through flickr, technorati and delicious. Monitor the results, tweak and continue.
- Steve Rubel suggests that companies should monitor flickr for how product mentions to gage public interest. I say you could take the top 150 list on flickr and upload product images with those tags. Be subtle about it…the restuarant coyly disguised as a family snap or the new product placed in that cheeky photo of Chicago…the possibilities are endless!
- Along the same lines, post photos of the president with a technorati tag for “right think” or “chimp smirk”, whichever. Tell your friends! It’s google bombing for 2005!
I’m taking my copy of 1984 and hiding under the covers. Someone wake me when the semantic web is realized.
Update! Others are concerned about this as well. There’s an article on Many to Many about delicious spam.
Funny, I read about the same problem in a completely different context here.
[Quote] The idea is for me to paint this stuff on my valuables as proof of ownership. I think a better idea would be for me to paint it on your valuables, and then call the police. [/Quote]
I haven’t looked closely at Technorati tags (or any others for that matter), but I thought their ownly function was self-tagging.
Ah, yes, Bruce Schneier! I read that today, too.
While some of us emerged from the womb already running at a fast clip (you know who you are), generally speaking we crawl, then walk, then run.
Agree. Disagree. Here to stay or gone tomorrow. I view folksonomies as a “crawling” step somewhere along the non-linear continuum of defining data, information and object spaces, then injecting those spaces with meaning in varied, supple contexts. That is what will eventually become the true semantic web.