Comments on: first impressions based on tag clouds

By: vanderwal

vanderwal — Sun, 08 Jan 2006 12:49:08 +0000

The tag clouds show the popular tags by the core group. This is helpful to some degree, but not the complete story. How does one find communities of similar interest (to one’s own) within a larger social system? There are benefits to scale in the larger social network ecosystems, but they can also foster wonderful sub-cultures for tangential interests or alternate vocabularies.

By: lindsey

lindsey — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 19:42:59 +0000

The tag phenomenon is so interesting…it feels like it popped up overnight. flickr is crazy with the tags, and there’s this site 43things.com where people list goals they want to accomplish, and there’s tags on there. Interesting to see the most popular tags from everyone’s goals. Travel, fun, life, health, love, music, personal, and family are currently the big ones!

By: Greg Maple

Greg Maple — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 21:53:59 +0000

I know I may never find an online community where I feel that I “fit in”, and that’s ok.
Of the three “clouds” I would most likely want to participate in the del.icio.us because there are specific tags which I would like to learn more about. Funny though, I almost didn’t notice that some of the tags were in red.

By: Noel Pinero

Noel Pinero — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 15:40:35 +0000

I know authoritarian types are getting their undies all in bunch over this grassroots tagging thing but I like Lou Rosenfeld’s take on folksonomies vs. taxonomies. Calling it metadata ecologies means that it’s not a zero sum game and maybe we can develop a neat switch that let’s us look at both views. I want to see easy tools that let you roll your own tag clouds!
Feel better danah!

By: Jeff Hester

Jeff Hester — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 14:35:56 +0000

zephoria – Spending my days in the world of knowledge management, I appreciate the value and the need for ontologies where the goal is cultural uniformity. Yet even in the corporate world, there is an opportunity for people-directed tagging.

As for Technorati being least useful, perhaps. Certainly larger pools will be less interesting. But it’s still a pretty small sample in the big scheme of things. How many people in the world know what the hell Technorati even is? Awareness places you in the circle.

By: zephoria

zephoria — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 14:15:33 +0000

Jeff – agreed. The trick though is that each has cultural context. It is meaningful because these tools are not universal. They each have their own flavor. I think that at a micro level, they are *super* informing but i actually think that Technorati is the least informative because it compiles data from too many different cultures. I think that this is the danger of throwing out ontologies – they have their value, especially when the goal is to try to bridge different cultures… the value of tags is that they reveal culture.

By: Jeff Hester

Jeff Hester — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 14:08:18 +0000

I’ve been following the tagging phenomenon with interest. Clay Shirky (www.shirky.com) has been a vocal proponent for throwing out the old ontology in favor of folksonomy-style tagging often represented by tag clouds.

Tag clouds are information-rich. At a glance, I see not only a list of categories (one way of looking at tags), but I get an immediate sense of what matters to the taggers. Because the tags that get used more often are more prominent, I can quickly grasp the focus and interest of the taggers.

I added a tag cloud to my own blog; it’s very revealing.

By: Peter Childs

Peter Childs — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 09:37:54 +0000

Interesting observation.

What would be fun is to map the tags to visually represent the similartity or divergence of the communities.

At a lower level it would be interesting to know where there are common tags, if these are created to people who bridge communities or by different people using the tag to mean different things.

By: Giles

Giles — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 06:19:45 +0000

Just passing through (from Wonderland) and wanted to say ‘great site’. I’m really enjoying reading some of your posts and the insight that shines through from them. Bookmarked!

By: coturnix

coturnix — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 23:48:14 +0000

Sorry, that Xmas was in English! I was tired…