In the late 90’s, when Knowledge Management was progressing in corporations, skills databases hold great promises. Some companies started huge programs to analyze, categorize and document employees skills, ending with central databases that would not evolve and not be used.

The development of some web2.0 tools and usage may signal the return of an improved version :
- relying on informal, decentralized, evolutive tagging to describe one’s skillset
- providing an inutuitive and dynamic interface to search through this database, using tagclouds and network maps

Some early attemps or interfaces can be found on the web :

Social networks and people search engine :
Much like you use the back of a business card you’ve just been handed to write down a few words to describe where/when you’ve met and what you discussed, some professional social networks (like Xing or MyBlogLog) and people search engine (like Spock) allow you to tag your contacts :

Business cards :
Ooprint launched a very successful template for business card amongst web2.0 buffs

Facebook applications :
Ask your friends to rate you (Social Profile), to tag you (Define Me), to give you nicknames (Niknames), or simply view your friend network differently (Socialistics), …

Interactive visual tag based search engines :
The best example is probably Quintura, as this example on ReadWriteWeb shows it. The tagcloud is interactive so you can “navigate” from tag to tag.

And finally a more graphical / artistic view :
If meaning and interactivity is not what you’re looking for, Wordle may be the tool you’re searching for.