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