It’s a little cloudy in here

June 9th, 2008

tag-cloudsIt has been a little while since I wrote a post that I felt strongly about, but I just had to bring this up because it has been bothering me for quite some time now. The problem at hand is the “Tag Cloud”. Nine out of Ten times I see one I want to cry. I can’t leave the page fast enough. Is this what Web2.0 is all about? Folksonomy gone bad? WHY! Let’s see if we can figure this out, or perhaps it is too late…

Confused Meaning

I am not going to go over the history of Web2.0, or anything like that, as there is plenty of information out there to make you sick (or add a tag cloud to your site). Upon first site of a tag cloud, one might be overwhelmed with confusion/frustration, and or any combination or synonym in between. Especially if you are presented with one on the home page in a really clever spot, like oh I don’t know, the sidebar? Just adding to the clutter of widgets and useless meta information about how your site “validates” yet it really does not.

Back to the point at hand. You come to a site most likely looking for information on a certain topic, and are seeing a cluster of words appearing in no semantic order or rhyme or reason. How come “koolaid” is gigantic, and it is right next to something about “sport fishing”? What gives!?!? I just wanted to find reviews on the new “Sex and the City” movie…DUH. For the common user, they might become overrun with ADD and click away and lose focus, then comes frustration, then the dreadful but inevitable exit.

If your tag cloud is sorted by the number of posts sharing a tag, then things might look a little strange. Take for example if your site/blog primarily discusses the topic of web design, it might not be uncommon to see words like “css, web standards, programming, design…”. Now suppose you have like 2 or 3 posts in each, and you also have a “news” tag that you have about 6 posts in it. Depending on your styling, “news” may appear as a more prominent area, while that is not the case at all.

Let’s take a look at probably the worst tag cloud ever:

First, the styled version…

tag-cloud-iconlook.jpg

Awful, at best. Now the un-styled version…(can it get any worse?)

-(taken from iconlook who incidentally have great icons!)

tag-cloud-iconlook-un.jpg

Yes, yes it can apparently. Try to nav that while on a cell phone. FUN!

I would really like to know what was going through their minds when they implemented this natural disaster? This is clearly a problem, because they allow their users to input tags. Then, without any filtering of any kind, they go right to this list, unlike the likes of del.icio.us who appear to have some type of rhyme, or reason behind their tagging.

Drag and drop your way to hell

By now, it is probably safe to assume that most developers are aware of wordpress, and all it’s glory in the blogging community. It is a great piece of software, don’t get me wrong, however I do have a problem with some of it’s stock “widgets”, and who would have guessed which, but the tag cloud. So, now, not only do we have a terrible un-user friendly nightmare, but we can now drag-and-drop this sucker right to our front door…Great!

Not semantic, 99 out of 100 times

Why don’t we just do this. Lose the phrase “tag-cloud”, and instead organize our content/navigation in a meaningful manner such as a list, with some headings to go along with them? This way we at least know which area or top level selection we are looking at, rather than jumping around like a raving meth addict. If people cannot clearly tell what your site is about within the first 5 seconds, you are not doing your job.

Instead of just loading your site up with the latest and greatest plugins, widgets, midgets, anything that rhymes with either, take a step back and look at your content. How can you make more sense to the user, rather than confuse them even more than they already are?

I am sorry for the lack of posts lately, but I bought a new car, and have just been all out with work. Sorry for not posting a Friday’s Five last week, I promise, this weeks will make up for it!

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10 Responses to “It’s a little cloudy in here”

Leave yours now...

  1. #1 JD ever-real says...

    I Totally agree.
    It serves little purpose because it’s so vague.
    I’m not going to click on a simple word…..

    • Posted on June 9th, 2008 at 12:02 pm

  2. #2 user says...

    Agreed 100%. I feel just as strongly as you about the shittiness of these tag clouds. It provides no benefit, looks terrible, and offers no explanation of what’s going to happen when you click on these words.

    • Posted on June 9th, 2008 at 1:40 pm

  3. #3 Brandon Hunt says...

    I also agree. There’s no context, no direction. It always looks like the worst SEO sales jerks just threw up the sites keywords and called it a day.

    • Posted on June 9th, 2008 at 10:38 pm

  4. #4 Andris says...

    I hate clouds!

    • Posted on June 10th, 2008 at 2:31 am

  5. #5 Reed says...

    Good post Matt, it’s got me thinkin’.

    I agree that tag clouds aren’t always the best nav tool, but I think it might be a little early to rule them out totally.

    They can do one thing amazingly: indicate reader interest quickly (and intuitively). It’s fun sometimes to see what other people were psyc’d about -or- the frequency of a certain contribution/tag.

    An example would be http://www.brandtags.net - the tag clouds aggregate people’s thoughts on brands so you can figure out which ones were most popular… and random ones to. Like “evil corporate giant” that make me laugh (and would be lost in a numbered list).

    Now, they’re not always the right choice. Like you mentioned, if someone is looking for a certain tag in a cloud then they are looking in the wrong place! They’d be much better off using a list-based nav that organized the tags into user-specific categories, alphabetical, or by date… basically depending on the application.

    So, my vote would be a multi-tool navigation for sites where you’re moving through a lot of content. Have a small tag cloud AND a relevant (to reader demands) designed list. The world wide web is not a place for absolutes… it’s about finding the best tool(s) to make the best experience.

    • Posted on June 10th, 2008 at 1:22 pm

  6. #6 Matt says...

    Hey Reed, thanks for commenting and I am glad you liked the post.

    I understand what you are saying and I briefly touched on this in my post, pointing out that del.icio.us does a good job with this very instance. You can tell what the site is about by the tags, but you can also make your own up for quicker reference within your own bookmarks.

    This separation I think is key to a well designed UI as you are not overwhelming visitors with in some cases, a completely new tool that might be foreign to you.

    With del.icio.us you as the user chose your level of participation, and depth into the tagging system.

    I am also not saying an “ordered” list is the absolute way to go, just a list would be a start.

    A nice addition for brandtags would be if they added some ajax to auto pull based on your input to avoid redundancy by spelling mistakes.

    In any case, thank you for your input.

    • Posted on June 10th, 2008 at 1:39 pm

  7. #7 Brian Mays says...

    I completely agree! Thanks for the post. The tag clouds I’ve seen are amazingly unorganized and feel like pandering to a “cool trend.”

    • Posted on June 10th, 2008 at 4:54 pm

  8. #8 Brian G says...

    Interesting article, it’s ones like this which sometimes make me feel like I don’t know anything, or maybe I’m just missing something.

    To me, well designed tag clouds which have been built on a well defined set of tags let a reader quickly scan things that might interest them.

    This is different than a hierarchical category structure (which I feel also needs to be included) in that a tagged item doesn’t need to be in the same category.

    On my own site, I’ve started tagging all of my new articles and I’m working on my seven year archive too. My experience is that it gives me a quick visual representation of what I’ve talked a lot about. I actually find that useful.

    • Posted on June 12th, 2008 at 9:02 am

  9. #9 Maya says...

    There are definitely valid points you bring up, but I have to say that in the user-friendly world of the Internet, it’s hard to make a blanket statement that tag clouds don’t or won’t work.

    As mentioned in some of the replies above, a tag cloud can be an intuitive navigational tool, and is a visual way to demonstrate public interest in a topic or category. In this way, a tag cloud serves a useful purpose - if you want to know what the masses are reading, it’s very easy to see at the first glance. But, as you said, not all tag clouds are organized enough for this kind of intuitive searching.

    To me, the most exciting part of this whole conversation is that the online community is determining what doesn’t work and how it can be improved. As the Internet and web 2.0 develop, there will be changes to the tag cloud and, in fact, every facet of the Internet…but I would hesitate to say that clouds will or should be obsolete. What if there were several different clouds organized by topic? You could easily (and visually) determine your category and use ’subclouds’ to navigate - sort of like a web.

    In any case, the posts above make it clear that the main problem now with tag clouds is their organization (or lack thereof). If we continue to see the Internet as fluid and changeable, we’ll figure out what kind of cloud (or whatever awesome, futuristic nav tool we haven’t even though of yet) is the best. And there may be certian ways to navigate certain information that just wouldn’t work anywhere else. The important part is recognizing it and creating something better that DOES fit the user’s needs. Keep the conversation going - in a few days, months, years…you’ll see an improved, well-organized, user friendly Internet.

    • Posted on June 12th, 2008 at 6:26 pm

  10. #10 Mike says...

    LOL. I am glad I am not the only person to be slightly turned off by Tag Clouds. I understand they can be valuable and look okay when used right, but I sure do remember the first time I saw them on a page.

    I was so confused at why anyone would want to do that and thought it looked horrible, messy and thought it was an accident.

    Thanks for the interesting article

    • Posted on June 24th, 2008 at 12:05 am

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