Pudding in a TagCloud

(Bill Cosby reference!) Thanks to Google Blogoscoped for reminding me about TagCloud, which generates clouds of tags based on RSS feeds you specify. The service is free and available at http://www.tagcloud.com/

TagCloud allows you to provide lists of RSS feeds. From there it'll extract the relevant information and generate "clouds" of tags based on the feeds. In addition to being heaps of syntax fun, this strikes me as in interesting way to broadly compare the content of different news sites/blogs.

So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to make three clouds: one based on Google 'blogs and news, one based on Yahoo 'blogs and news, and one based on Ask Jeeves 'blogs and news. This ain't scientific, it's just an experiment.

After I registered (which requires only a user name and password; e-mail address is optional) I was asked to specify a name and description of my cloud. I'll start with the Google one. From there you can enter lists of RSS feeds that are relevant. You can also import OPML files too if you like. (Hmm, I might do some playing with this and Kebberfegg.)

I decided to limit myself to four URLs for each cloud. Google's are:

Official Google Blog: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Feedster Search - Google "search engine" -- http://feedster.com/search.php?q=google+%22search+engine%22&sort=date&ie=UTF-8&hl=&content=full&type=rss&limit=15
Icerocket Search - Google "search engine" -- http://www.icerocket.com/search?tab=blog&q=google+%22search+engine%22&rss=1
Google News Search: google "search engine" (sorted by date, 10 results): http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=&ie=UTF-8&scoring=d&q=google+%22search+engine%22&output=rss

I entered all those URLs in and then clicked the View link near the top of the page, which generated a cloud. The cloud had several dozen tags, for aap to witness. The largest tag was Google, of course, though other large tags included marketing manager, product, rumor (big surprise), and Oliveri. Click on a tag and you'll get a list of stories from the feeds relevant to that tag.

Now, a Yahoo Cloud. I go up to My Clouds and choose Create a New Cloud. For this one, I'll try:

Yahoo Search Blog: http://www.ysearchblog.com/index.xml
Feedster Search - Yahoo "search engine" -- http://feedster.com/search.php?q=yahoo+%22search+engine%22&sort=date&ie=UTF-8&hl=&content=full&type=rss&limit=15
Icerocket Search - Yahoo "search engine" -- http://www.icerocket.com/search?tab=blog&q=yahoo+%22search+engine%22&rss=1
Google News Search: Yahoo "search engine" (sorted by date, 10 results): http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=&ie=UTF-8&scoring=d&q=yahoo+%22search+engine%22&output=rss

This is a very interesting cloud. Tags here spanned from access to zex (yes, zex) and while Yahoo itself was not a large tag, Yahoo Search was. Other large tags included search and several variants (audio search and video search) as well as ipod, bloggers, and podcasting.

Last, the Ask Jeeves Cloud:

Ask Jeeves Blog: http://blog.ask.com/index.rdf
Feedster Search - "Ask Jeeves" "search engine" -- http://feedster.com/search.php?q=%22ask+jeeves%22+%22search+engine%22&sort=date&ie=UTF-8&hl=&content=full&type=rss&limit=15
Icerocket Search - "Ask Jeeves" "search engine" -- http://www.icerocket.com/search?tab=blog&q=%22ask+jeeves%22+%22search+engine%22&rss=1
Google News Search: "Ask Jeeves" "search engine" (sorted by date, 10 results): http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=&ie=UTF-8&scoring=d&q=%22ask+jeeves%22+%22search+engine%22&output=rss

From abandon to yep, this cloud had no big orange tags when I looked at it. Even Ask Jeeves wasn't a big tag. Unusual tags in this cloud include pirate, popular, "theft auto", cheats, pragmatic, and ... "Bonnie Tyler"? I didn't get as much of as sense of cohesion as I did when I looked at the first two clouds, but that could be because not as many people are talking about Ask Jeeves to begin with.

I'm not sure this is what they intended it for, but I could have a lot of fun with this tool. Plug in all the official Google Blogs, for example, turn them into a cloud and see what all the buzzwords are. Do the same with the official Yahoo blogs. Put all the smaller search engine 'blogs in there together and see if I could pick out common threads. Hmmm.

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