2008-08-10
Cloudy, hints of tags
Now that Moo have launched business cards, it seems the hot thing to do is to use Wordle to create a tag cloud for use on them (as seen here, by Edd Dumbill, perhaps the first person I know of to do so).
Now, I don’t have a deeply aggregated site, so my cards just use my delicious tags. However, Tom does, and his cards show one problem with the simplest approach to tags, namely, quantity trumps quality.
Specifically, if I were generating a cloud for myself, I’d want to prioritise long posts (like those on Vox or my old MT site) above notes (like this, although I don’t usually tag on Tumblr¹) above photos above links. Effectively, I’d want to work out some sort of weighting (perhaps algorithmically, based on length, although that won’t work for photos) such that content I’ve written and considered generates a larger entry than the fact I went to Cornwall on holiday once. (It was fun, but I don’t really feel it’s part of a definition of me).
Admittedly, this isn’t much use as a thought, given I don’t work on it, but maybe someone else will run with this (and perhaps use the Social Graph API as a good way of collecting all someone’s sites together?)
¹ Although it is possible, by using “show advanced options” in the dashboard; it’s hidden well enough Jeremy Keith didn’t know about it. To be fair I don’t know how to search using them, so it doesn’t really solve his problem.
