Rather than trying to talk about what is being talked about and covered most on this blog, here's another way of representing it:
The above is a "word cloud" created on Wordle, a tool that sorts through text on a webpage, blog, or document and spits out a visual representation giving prominence to the most frequently appearing (source) words.
Not surprising that words such as "news" are large and prominent on IdeaLab, but look at the size of "data" and such words as "can" and "will".BTW, it appears that Wordle only indexes current discussion, a kind of snapshot in time, as opposed to indexing a blog or website it its entirety.
Regardless, for us visual types its an interesting way to "see" and sense current blog activity and hot topics rather than trying to process it all through reading. It also might serve as an interesting way to gauge ongoing audience interest and participation.
Just for fun, and for comparison's sake, here is a "Wordle" of today's New York Times home page:
You can do a Wordle for your own blog or blog feed as long as you have an Atom or RSS feed.
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2 comments so far, Add Yours
JD Lasica said:
July 13, 2008 3:24 AM
Very interesting.
But how the heck are Medicare, Medicaid and government twice as big as journalism, journalist and journalists?
Paul Lamb said:
July 13, 2008 4:07 PM
Because, as I understand it, a Wordle only sources from the mostly commonly used current words and not from the the hitorical universe of words. So if current discussions are using more words like Medicare and Medicaid, then those get featured more prominently in a word cloud.
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