Tag Clouds R.I.P.?
I loved tag clouds from the moment I saw them, and I still do. Two years ago, they roamed the social web like buffalo on the pre-Columbian plains of North America... huge, thundering herds of keywords of all shades and sizes. And you'll see them to this day on many of their earliest adopters - from Delicious.com (makeover and all) to 43 Things.
These days, though, I'm noticing that on more and more sites the tag clouds have evaporated. I'm not saying they're dead (okay, granted, that's exactly what the cartoon's saying, but that's why they issue artistic licenses), but they're getting scarcer.
And maybe they were overused and abused back in the day; not every site lends itself to a tag cloud, and not every tag cloud needs to be overwhelming and cluttered. Still, they have their place, and I'd be sorry to see them die out.
Now, the Flash splash screen? I'd go to that funeral in my dancing shoes.
[Ed: readers are encouraged to ignore the RWW tag cloud, located in our sidebar, for this post.]
Top image credit: ocean.flynn
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I don't think so.
Many people see tags as the best way to classify their posts, add to this that with such huge amount of information on web tagging was the best solution. If we are wondering about the death of tags we have to ask about the alternatives.
You didn't need to tell us to ignore it. We're ignoring all that gorp. :)
Tag clouds are visually interesting, but they perform horribly from a usability perspective. I've seen a bunch of user lab tests that show that a mainstream audience just doesn't understand them.
We will show you the cloud baby
Pop Quiz! So why does RWW still have their Popular Tag cloud?
I agree with @Mohammad. Tag clouds have their place when used properly. The relevance of a tag in a cloud would be enhanced if the totals were added either after the tag or adding it to the title attribute, i.e. "There are 200 articles tagged with Firefox"
You should publish your articles as clouds just to make a statement.
They haven't died, they have just become part of the general user interface, and has thus 'vanished' into the background as a mere detail among many, meant to enhance the useability, or not used at all.
I don't think so either but tag clouds are for the most part just clutter and Cadillac chrome on many, many websites. Its no wonder that people have ignored the experience that tag clouds offer, tag clouds didn't do much except gesture ever so slightly a description of the content. This limited use was just more noise on the page.
Tag Clouds have a major role in guiding navigation and spotlighting content but only if site UI and UX designers do more with tag clouds than add a bumper with tits.
If you like tag clouds you might like Wordle. It'll make clouds from just about anything. Here's a cloud for RWW:
http://wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/102050/RWW
I've always hated tag clouds, but I agree with you - splash pages, intro pages of any kind, I would gladly welcome their parting.
Yup, Wordle is really cood. Here are tag clouds for Frankenstein and Engadget: http://blog.gadodia.net/my-tag-cloud-never-looked-like-this/
If all tag clouds looked like these, then they would never die..
Billy thanks for the Wordle! Just made a tag cloud 4 my blog!
http://wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/102246/Igor_The_Troll
Tag clouds are bunk... always have been...
Tag clouds are, and always will be, an eye-sore. I'll be happy when I don't see them on sites full stop. :)
Nah, that's a bit too harsh. I do think they serve a purpose, but certainly not as a navigation mechanism.
Love it - Wordle is "cool" Im "blogging about it" Its "pretty."
Not "its very useful" "I use it all the time" or "My mom just loves it" - you sound like new media consultants breathless over the new thing you can mention in a meeting to make someone feel technically inferior. How about waiting like say, 3 seconds to see if something will start to catch on before making it the latest thing? Tag clouds failed because no one used them, period - yet they were endless pitched as "have to haves" using pretty much the same reasoning you're giving for Wordle.
No matter what they are termed or look like tag clouds serve a purpose in indicating what the content will be about. It's a time-saver; just scan the tags to see if you are interested in or like the content or not.
Tag Clouds are going away for the simple reason that a flat list, listed from highest frequency to lowest frequency, with the associated number count next to them are far more useful than a vague cloud of unreadable words.
Rob -- my friend and I have developed tag clouds for news headlines that are pulled from 100s of the top news sources:
http://www.newsflashr.com/topics/world.html
(choose any mainstream or blog category and you’ll see a different news cloud)
We're also offering a more traditional "feeds view" of headlines - each view has its distinct advantages, but I personally share your enthusiasm for tag clouds as a quick way to get a wide-angle view of what’s going on. In our case, it’s the "collective intelligence" of all the top news editors in any given category and we use color to emphasize freshness and text size to emphasize popularity.
But our most important feature will finally be surfacing later this week ... SEARCH
Happy to get any thoughtful thoughts on the new service
-Gal
Funny, I blogged about this just a few days ago regarding the new Delicious redesign. Take a look here if you like:
http://www.andydesoto.com/social-media/delicious-redesign-launches-but-i-still-hate-tagging/
If you like tag clouds, you may also like Commentag, a widget tagging your comments automatically to keep discussions sorted on your blogs.
As @Mikael said, tag clouds are evolving. As other outstanding ideas in web 2.0, they have good and bad usages. But the power is still there.
Tagging is an useful and insightful invention, but it has been weighed down by the amount of punditry that it inspired. Falling leaves? Maybe. But users need the leaves to be swept up or they can't see where they're walking, and new technologies like tagging need to be used appropriately or they create new problems.
A few site designs ago, I had a tag cloud displayed pretty predominantly. My mom would always call me to talk about pictures I had on Flickr, and I finally had to ask how she found flickr pictures (not that I care, but I never told her how). She clicked on the big word PHOTO in the tag cloud as if it was a bit of navigation. Never would have thought that would be the case, but then, never thought people would search for a domain name to get to a web site ;)
Those generic Tag Clouds may have indeed vanished, but it seems that content specific clouds have risen in their place:
Here are a couple examples:
Mecanbe.com - http://mecanbe.com/goals.aspx
Mecanbe uses the cloud to list member goals, with sorting and filtering tools.
Librarything.com - http://www.librarything.com/authorcloud/PrairieProgressive
These guys are using the cloud concept to showcase popular authors.
I guess we are seeing the evolution of the tag cloud into 'content clouds'.
Mmm...i don't think. Do u see Searchcloud? www.searchcloud.com
I write a review on my blog some days ago.
I didn't like Tag Clouds to start with, but now I have grown more fond of them. I think it was that I didn't understand them, but now I do, just as Joe Lazarus said.
I think I'll use the sites that people have mentioned to make a Tag Cloud for my blog. Check it out if you want. =]
Robert... Xxx
It seems that most of the popular ways of tag-clouding are overused. But some innovative ways like http://the-geek.in still makes Tag Clouds interesting.
I am not sure they're dead but they are evolving... I saw an interesting implementation on Technorati.com -- a dynamic tag cloud may be the next generation.
Never liked them. They did 0 for actual usability, and were little more than a meme borne of some masturbatory programmer fetish.
I do agree that they were over used, like most good things online but have used a cloud appropriately on Currently Looking For Work and it works well.
The tag clouds themselves are very useful I think, for example, how they were used before in Last.Fm was really good. But some sites use them just above the posts, in which case it's not so good. I think it's about visually representing them in the most appealing way and also that they can be understood by general audience, not only web geeks.
Funny, how things that cause such a furor in the web 2.0 cloister come and go without being so much as a blip for mainstream users. I was doing some research in undergrad regarding tag clouds and found that most of my friends, college students who are reasonably tech-savvy, had never seen a tag cloud (or maybe just never noticed them) let alone used them.
Honestly, the biggest problem with basic tag clouds are that they're boring. They also straddle the line between information visualization and navigation and end up doing neither well. I find dynamic tag clouds like Twitscoop's fascinating and a much more natural fit for the format.
There's a pretty neat application useage of a tag cloud in relation to search here, http://www.widgetplus.com
Hello there,
well, tag clouds used to be really new and overhyped.. until some concerns about usability came up. Now it's our turn to make sure a tag cloud doesn't have 10000 tag, but rather some relevant portion or something. They have still all the potential in the world to be big and popular, just not if they become silly eye candy like those social network graphs :)
If you're interested in more, check my follow-up post on http://topify.wordpress.com/2008/08/05/whats-the-matter-with-tag-clouds/
Cheers,
Martin
Grant, a few days ago, made the interesting point that tag clouds are one of those things that "we" liked, but that the rest of the world didn't care about (I paraphrase, rather than quote). Wordle seems like "tag cloud 2.0."
But mainstream media seems to be picking up on Wordle, and showing what it's good for. See:
http://changingway.org/2008/08/05/presidential-wordle/
Here's why tags are useful...
My site sells custom-written letters. Two people coming to the site needing the same letter can arrive with different ideas of what that letter may be entitled. For example, one person may come looking for a 'Letter of Recommendation' while another comes looking for a 'Recommendation Letter.' The examples are numerous, so I won't continue, but you've got the idea.
If there were something else out there, I'd put it into the new release
RobN
LetterRep.com
Back in April, I had the idea of the Tagdex - a better way of employing tags than the cloud, built on the idea of a book index. Take a look at the proposal in detail:
http://www.metablog.us/content/beyond-the-tag-cloud-the-tagdex/
I consider the tag clouds to be the best way that helps one to find out what the web site is about. For instance, when I go to someone's blog, I see not only their recent posts, but a tag cloud that simply tells me what the author mostly writes about.