Folksonomy, the long tail, wisdom of the masses, crowdsourcing, perpetual beta – these are just some web 2.0 buzzwords and concepts that build the foundation for modern web sites. But they are often unknown, misused or even exhausted. The following short descriptions try to glance over the meaning and their really important background.

Folksonomy is composed of the words “folks” and “taxonomy”. It is about the user-made social classification of content with free defined keywords. These tags can be associated with the topic and help to categorize it. They create a collaborative network that approaches the human mindset much closer than a fixed set of categories.

Wisdom of the masses describes an architecture of participation where users share their information and create their own content. They build a global, networked informationsystem. The entire contributions generated by the users form a huge knowledge entity. The more users join, the better the content. Websites act as brokers which bundle the ressources and make them available in an enhanced form.

The long tail depicts an economic concept with an equal relevance of maxima and minima. A great many of niche markets result in a higher sales volume than the top selling products. They are bought more often because of positive recommendations from other users. A large offering of products to a small group of users creates a majority which influences the e-commerce decisive.

Crowdsourcing means the assignment of certain parts or tasks to the general public which guarantees a constant high quality. It leads to an evolution of social participation as the content get newly filtered, arranged and shared again and again(‘better content through masses’).

The perpetual beta results from a permanent testing of web-based applications. They publish new functions and features constantly. Fresh ideas are coded fast and users try them instantly. Results and feedback can be obtained as the functions are used. Software is seen as an service which requires constant adjustments to assure its quality. User can help to fit the applications to their specific needs through testing.