Tag Cloud A reader asks:
Do you get anything out of the tagcloud at the bottom Weblog Tools Collection’s navigation page?
I personally like to know what gets thrown on top of which piles. However, are tag clouds useless? Are they useless in the context of blogs? What do you get out of the tag cloud from weblogtoolscollection.com? Did you know it existed? And last but not the least, have you every used a tag cloud to any level of usefulness beside just looking cool?
An avid fan of business, education, technology and finance. I lead a lean, highly focussed and capable team of Java Back End developers and Front End developers through a maze of complex software wizardry to fulfill the web maintenance needs of a large chemical manufacturer. As per Myers-Briggs Personality Types, I am an ESTJ. I pride in a project completed on time and according to plan. My hobbies include all kinds of technology, anything that I can taste and anything that goes fast or flies in the air. I like to read business books and comics in my spare time.
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Personally I love tag clouds, they are a much easier way for me to get to information, without them I would constantly have to search, or at least perform multiple clicks to get to what I want to see.
Tag clouds pretty much give the big picture of what the writer is blogging about, and IMO they’re more useful than strict categories.
I enjoy seeing tag clouds; I think they’re useful as a way of instantly seeing what’s top of the mind in many posts. I think they’re useful in very prolific, varied feeds (like boingboing, Digg or Engadget) in particular. I don’t use them on my blogs, but I might add at some point simply for the coolness factor.
Do they operate on Technorati tags, del.icio.us tags, or other? Just curious; the usefulness of a cloud would depend heavily on how accurately and thoroughly someone tags the postings they refer to. I’ve wondered this previously, since many people seem to add just 1-2 tags per posting; I add as many as seem appropriate to mine.
Since you aske: I didn’t know your tag cloud existed, since I read this via Bloglines.com; aggregators don’t show everything. Perhaps automate a fine-print text note in a footer at the bottom of postings, referring people to things like this that wouldn’t be seen in an aggregator?
I usually find tagclouds very useful as it makes it easier to find posts related to the topic you want to read more about, and at the same time you can see if there actually have been written any posts on whatever you are searching for.
Tagclouds are more than just some “fancy-wow-cool-looking” textlinkthing.
I used to keep one in my sidebar but now I just have a link there that points to my cloud on an added WP Page off my blog, it shortens load time and I think I was not XHTML validating with del.icio.us’ script anyway.
Now that I’ve had a chance to actually look at the cloud you were talking about… the light color is soo light I can’t read any of the words.