Integrating Tagging into the Web of Data: Overview and Combination of Existing Tag Ontologies

As the number of social websites offering tagging facilities increases, tagging has become not only a common basis for user participation, but also an important aspect of social content. Tagging is primarily based on the user's participation and interaction, including the sharing and the exchange of their interests. However, even though users can collect and share tagging data with conventional technologies, this data is fragmentary and remains disconnected. Therefore, discovering content across independent sites remains a challenge. On the other hand, technologies of the Web of Data, and especially ontologies, help towards this goal of integrating tagged data. In this paper, we investigate the core features of existing tag ontologies that attempt to represent a common conceptualization of tagging and that provide well-defined semantics for tagging data, allowing for the sharing and interlinking of tagging data across independent sites or communities.