Skip to main content

Tag Clouds Evolve: Understanding Tag Clouds

Popularity Report

Total Popularity Score: 0
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...

Rank

Bookmark History

Saved by 10 people (1 private), first by anonymouse user on 2006-07-30


Public Comment

on 2006-07-30 by nicolamattina

Interessanti considerazioni sulla semantica delle tag cloud.

Public Sticky notes

I'll look at first generation tag clouds in terms of their reliance on a "chain of understanding" that semantically links groups of people tagging and consuming tags, and thus underlies tagging and social metadata efforts in general. I'll begin with structure of first generation tag clouds, and move quickly to the very important way that tag clouds serve as visualizations of semantic fields.

Highlighted by wolffw

The simple structure of first generation tag clouds allows them to perform a very valuable function without undue complexity. That function is to visualize semantic fields or landscapes that are themselves part of a chain of understanding linking taggers and tag consumers.

Highlighted by jtrentadams

Tag clouds accrete over time when one person or a group of people associate a set of terms with a focus of some sort; a photo on flickr, a URL / link in the case of del.icio.us, an album or song for last.fm. As this list shows, a focus can be anything that can carry meaning or understanding.

Highlighted by wolffw

The tag is a sort of label that references a concept or set of concepts. A cloud of tags is then a collection of labels referring to a cluster of aggregated concepts. The combination of tags that refer to concepts, with the original focus, creates a 'semantic field'. A semantic field is the set of concepts connected to a focus, but in a form that is now independent of the originating taggers, and available to other people for understanding.

Highlighted by jtrentadams

The tag is a sort of label that references a concept or set of concepts. A cloud of tags is then a collection of labels referring to a cluster of aggregated concepts. The combination of tags that refer to concepts, with the original focus, creates a 'semantic field'. A semantic field is the set of concepts connected to a focus, but in a form that is now independent of the originating taggers, and available to other people for understanding. I

Highlighted by wolffw

he most important thing to understand is that *tag clouds comprise visualizations of a semantic field*, as we've seen from the chain of understanding.

Highlighted by wolffw

Thus whenever a user encounters a tag cloud, they ask and answer a series of questions intended to establish the cloud's context and further their understanding. Context related questions often include "Where did these tags come from? Who applied them? Why did they choose these tags, and not others? What time span does this tag cloud cover?" Context in this case means knowing enough about the conditions and environment from which the cloud was created, and the decisions made about what tags to present and how to present them. Figure 9 summarizes the idea of context.

Highlighted by wolffw