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Wired: A growing number of websites with user-created content are relying on user-generated tags, also known as folksonomies, to let people know what's available.

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"To Steve Rubel, author of the blog Micro Persuasion, folksonomies are a boon for marketers, who, he said, can get real-time views of what user sites like Flickr or Delicious are interested in.

"Where the eyeballs go," Rubel said, "there's an opportunity to experiment with marketing."

Rubel also said he'd like to see services like Google add tags as a way to bring more user-specific context to search results. As it is, he explained, search-engine results differ from tag searches in that they are not based on user-created content."

Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.