Tag Clouds

Presented By:

Laura F. BrightFebruary 27th, 2006

INF385T: Semantic WebSpring 2006 / Turnbull

Personal Introduction

I am a ...

PhD student in the Department of Advertising

An active partner at Seedling Online

Researcher with interests that include interactive advertising, usability, blogging, and perceived information flow in digital environments

More information at: www.brightwoman.com.

Presentation Overview

Tag Clouds: Definitions, Arguments & Examples

Uses for Tag Clouds: Personal, Social, Corporate

Tag Clouds & Advertising: Tagvertising?

Research Application: Methods & Ideas

Conclusions: The State of the Cloud

Discussion Questions: Tag Your It!

What is a Tag?

Technical Architecture Group (TAG)

Descriptors that individuals assign to an object (i.e., a document or photo)

Tags are used in collaborative categorizing projects across many areas, including:

Personal Social Corporate Academic

Tags in the “Smart Data Continuum”

1. Logical Assertions

2. Classification

3. Formal Class Models

4. Rules

5. Trust

Source: Daconta, Orbst & Smith (2003)

What is a Tag Cloud?

From the technical perspective ... A “visual depiction of content tags” used within a digital environment

From the visual design perspective ... A weighted list of frequently used terms

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_cloud

Tag Cloud Characteristics

Tags are arranged in alphabetical order

Most frequently used tags are often in a larger, bolder font than other words

Easy to search for most popular tags using alpha order and word size

First tag cloud was on Flickr

Idea based upon visual depictions of website referrers pulled from log file analysis

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_cloud

Arguments For & Against “Tag Clouds are the new mullets ... Brilliant as the idea

remains, faddishness is choking its air supply.” http://www.zeldman.com/daily/0405d.shtml/ (Zeldman 2006)

Tag Clouds are bringing visual structure to the information chaos. (Daconta et al 2003)

“The relationships between the tags are what’s important, not so much the tags themselves.” http://www.nicholasjon.com/?p=1647 (Jon 2006)

Tag Clouds can help find implied and hidden relationships in your data. (Daconta et al 2003)

Tag Clouds are more meaningful to their creators than to those outside users who are exposed to them. (QTSaver Blog)

Example of a Tag Cloud

Google Cloud - Aggregating the Wisdom and Madness of the Crowd

Example of a Tag Cloud

The AdCloud - Classified Ads Cloud per City

Uses for Tag Clouds

Knowledge Modeling

Knowledge Retrieval

Knowledge Integration

Tag Cloud Tool Example

Tag Cloud Beta - www.tagcloud.com

Tag Cloud Tool Example

Create your own cloud code ...

Tag Clouds & Advertising

Paid tag placement & linkage in a given tag cloud on a specific site

Example: Zoom Tags Example: The Ad Cloud

‘Advertise’ most frequently accessed content via tag clouds on corporate or non-profit websites to guide information flow

Example: Connotea.org Your Tag Cloud on Your Blog / Website

Tag Clouds & Advertising

Zoom Tags - For Advertisers & Publishers

Tagvertising on TagMan

Hang-Man Game for Tags

Taxonomies & Tag Clouds

Taxonomies are ... “The classification of information entities in the form of a hierarchy, according to the presumed relationships of the real world entities that they represent.” (Daconta et al 2003, p146)

Express the bare minimum of semantics needed to distinguish among the objects of your information space

Taxonomies provide the basic information structure for a given space and the ontologies flesh it out

The Ontology Spectrum

An ontology can range from ....

and standardizes the meaning of a given domain.

Research Method and Ideas

Integrated Qualitative Analysis (McCoy & Northcutt 2003)

Method to generate tag clouds for a given domain within a given sample of people

Focus group meets Mental ModelingStudy how tag clouds are created by watching participants form groups of similar data

Quantify most powerful relationships and form a system of how the given set of attributes are related to one another

Helps to identify hidden relationships within a meaningful data set

Conclusions

Superior decisions require superior knowledge - tagging helps this at all levels

Tag clouds give a visual picture of what terms are most important to an individual or organization over time

Help data organization efforts for visual learners, etc.

Although they do seem faddish, it appears that they are here to stay for a bit at least

Discussion Questions I

Are tag clouds really just visualized folksonomies? Do they really help build taxonomies and onotologies?

In terms of business process reengineering, what do you think is the best approach for corporations to begin tagging their data, i.e. creating clouds?

Do tag clouds seem like an appropriate navigation device for visual learners? Has anyone seen any research on this?

Discussion Questions II

Do you agree that tag clouds would be an interesting way to study how folksonomies, etc. change over time for an individual, social group, corporation, etc.?

When we talk about ontologies is it always in terms of the upper-case Semantic Web, e.g does ontology always infer top-down classification models?

References

Daconta et al (2003) Semantic Web Jon (2006) ‘Tag Clouds: A Response’,

http://www.nicholasjon.com/?p=1647 Zeldman (2006) ‘Tag Clouds are the New Mullets’,

http://www.zeldman.com/daily/0405d.shtml/ http://www.stoweboyd.com/message/2006/02/tagcloud_growin.html http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/node/62 http://www.theadcloud.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/ http://www.petefreitag.com/item/429.cfm http://www.petefreitag.com/item/396.cfm http://zoomclouds.com/ http://3spots.blogspot.com/2006/02/tagclouds-obervations-font-

sizes-and.html http://www.apogee-web-consulting.com/tagman/2006/02/tagvertisi

ng-experiment.html http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/duke-wie/blog/?p=379 http://mamoo.info/blog/2006/02/65/ http://www.poorbuthappy.com/ease/semantic/ http://qtsaver.blogspot.com/2006/02/tag-cloud.html/ http://i-a-l.blogspot.com/2006/02/folksonomies-and-not-or.html http://ajaxian.com/archives/googlecloudcom-ajax-driven-google-

zeitgeist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_cloud

Thank You!

Thanks for your time ... Have a great day!