A tag cloud or word cloud (or weighted list in visual design) is a visual depiction of user-generated tags or simply the word content of a site, typically used to describe the content of web sites. Tags are usually single words and are normally listed alphabetically, and the importance of a tag is shown with font size or color. Thus, both finding a tag by alphabet and by popularity is possible. The tags are usually hyperlinks that lead to a collection of items that are associated with a tag.
They were all the rage in web projects, not so long ago - back when it was hip to covert everything as a web 2.0 project - and heralded by some as 'the' future of navigation and wayfinding. However this vogue seems to be fading on the web and just when I was beginning to forget about them I noticed the UK edition of Wired (@wireduk) magazine uses a tag cloud as a means to highlight which words and thus topics are most talked about within the pages of that edition. This caught my eye and made me actually go in hunt of a reference or two.
In a moment of 'play' I then wondered if tag clouds would be an interesting way of getting a visual-overview of any wordy information. And I started by pasting the entire content of a RFP (example 2 below)
Example 1) The entire content of a RFP (request for proposal) which helped me really see the sub-context of what was really important to them
Example 2) Words used to describe me by clients and colleagues - posted on my Linked-in profile (http://uk.linkedin.com/in/mylesikos)
Example 3) Google News Feed - a snapshot of world news articles being displayed (http://news.google.co.uk/news?um=1&cf=all&ned=uk&hl=en&q=google&cf=all&output=rss)
See what you can discover using http://www.wordle.net/create and please paste the links to any examples in the comments below or why not follow and message at Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/mylesdavidson)
Share your Twitter Business Card: http://twtbizcard.com
Here's mine: http://twtbizcard.com/mylesdavidson
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