Common Craft Blog
Is it a Tag Cloud? Weighted List? Zeitgeist?
By leelefever on April 21, 2005 - 10:57am
We've seen them on Del.icio.us, Technorati, Flickr, 43 Things, Upcoming.org, Amazon and even personal blogs (scroll), but I'm hearing all sorts of different names. You know what I'm talking about- right? The groupings of words with the size of the text indicating the popularity or frequency of the word.
I heard a new one today from Zeldman, who calls it a "tag cloud", which he says is the new mullet. Funny. I like the "cloud" part, but it's not just tags (See Amazon or 43 Things above). My favorite, right now is a "weighted list", albeit vanilla. Amazon calls their's "concordance" and I've heard zeitgeist too.
So, what do you call this thing? What should it be called?
(This snippet is from Flickr)
Is it a Tag Cloud? Weighted List? Zeitgeist?
About words, you should also check the WordCount @ Fabrica:
http://www.fabrica.it/wordcount/main.php
Is it a Tag Cloud? Weighted List? Zeitgeist?
Scientificaly spoken it is a 'visualization of free terms, using font sizes as an expression for either importance or quantity' ;)
Is it a Tag Cloud? Weighted List? Zeitgeist?
Nice Sascha. Perhaps we could come up with a fitting acronym... VOFTUFSAAEFEIOQ? or may be just "VOFTUFS" for short.
Is it a Tag Cloud? Weighted List? Zeitgeist?
Good idea ;) You know, Germans tend to make up long terms and abbreviate them afterwards - seems like you have this tendency, too ;)
My point actually is that coining a term for that leads to the same discussion that is going on about 'community'. VOFTUFS has different meanings, coming from the context it is used in.
Is it a Tag Cloud? Weighted List? Zeitgeist?
"Weighted list" is a generic term that just means the list organization includes some "weighted" factor--so there are lots of ways to display weighted lists.
43 Things' "Today's Tags" on their home page is another example of a weighted list--sorting by weight count.
What's nice about the Flickr-type list is that it's another (maybe even new--not sure) way to display the weighting in a list. In particular, it allows the list terms to be concisely displayed alphabetically and, at the same time, to visually show the weighting (using the font size).
(btw, Ta-Da Lists also have a nice way to show weighting [gif] that's different.)
I think the "zeitgeist" name is good when it refers to the cases where the weighting reflects what is currently popular or active.
So, part of the question about this is: what parts of that Flickr-type display have to be there to deserve the name? The Flickr-type display is:
-an alphabetical list
-of single word keyword-terms (tags)
-space separated (e.g., it's not one word on each line)
-limited to most popular terms (e.g., top 100)
-with the relative popularity rank reflected in the term's font size
43 Things home page "things view" doesn't limit it to single word terms, and isn't alphabetical. Some site displays subsitute most recent for most popular.
Anyway, I don't actually know what's a good name either!
Is it a Tag Cloud? Weighted List? Zeitgeist?
how about blogarithims? a logarithim is a symbol denoting a larger value....so, we have blogs sized by their frequency...thus, a..
BLOGARITHM
i am no math person, but this seems to fit...
Is it a Tag Cloud? Weighted List? Zeitgeist?
I like concordance, but it's definitely weighted, so I'm going with 'weighted concordance.' Sounds kinda academic though...
Is it a Tag Cloud? Weighted List? Zeitgeist?
From the choices available, I like weighted list... but I'd like to see something which uses the word "topography." That suggests the visual appeal of the big and little words scattered around the page forming peaks and valleys.