There are three main types of tag cloud applications in social software, distinguished by their meaning rather than appearance. In the first type, there is a tag for the frequency of each item, whereas in the second type, there are global tag clouds where the frequencies are aggregated over all items and users. In the third type, the cloud contains categories, with size indicating number of subcategories.
In the first type, size represents the number of times that tag has been applied to a single item. This is useful as a means of displaying metadata about an item that has been democratically 'voted' on and where precise results are not desired. Examples of such use include Last.fm (to indicate genres attributed to bands) and LibraryThing (to indicate tags attributed to a book).
In the second, more commonly used type,[citation needed] size represents the number of items to which a tag has been applied, as a presentation of each tag's popularity. Examples of this type of tag cloud are used on the image-hosting service Flickr, blog aggregator Technorati and on Google search results with DeeperWeb .
In the third type, tags are used as a categorization method for content items. Tags are represented in a cloud where larger tags represent the quantity of content items in that category.
More generally, the same visual technique can be used to display non-tag data, as in a word cloud or a data cloud.
Nishan Shanaka Korala Gamage
Colombo, Sri Lanka
Author: Eye Think
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