Folksonomy Mapping (2)

We earlier talked about Folksonomy mapping or what Clay Shirky coined as "mass amateurization" in 2002.

Geomantic clarifies Shirky's term for mapping and gathering data:

"The really interesting thing about mass amateurization is that it has made it possible for amateurs to collect the data that have been traditionally undervalued or too expensive for public and private enterprises to collect (...)."

Let's bring that in line with Sean Gorman's post on Google Indexed KML from a recent conference:

"Of the millions of KML files Google has indexed roughly 95% of them have only a single feature. Meaning the vast majority of KML indexed by Google consists of single place marks like “this is my house” or “this is an airplane in flight“."

As having been said almost everywhere, Google focuses on the long tail, a seemingly natural distribution curve and especially its end covering a large number entities with small number of observations.

Chris Anderson repeatedly pointed out that "(...) successful Long Tail aggregators have to have both a head (hits) and a tail (niches) to work well. It's not enough to just have the tail." Taken to the mapping space we could deduct: having the 80% streets that 80+% of the people drive 80+% of their time is just the head of the long tail.

For folksonomy mapping, this could mean:

• 20% of the areas people are interested in for maps and directions are densly populated urban areas - so chances are that freestyle GPS-data collectors produce proper maps.
• 80% (read as: less people interested, less volunteers, flat world, non-urban terrain) aren't covered properly and resulting maps - naturally and just because there's more focus on the upper 20%.

Quite logically, folksonomy mapping or the “mass amateurization” of generating maps will cover urban areas (where geo nerds most likely are at universities, campuses) and slowly fade out into the long tail of rural areas.

Next question: does it matter?