Its what all the cool bloggers are doing, or in fact what is be coming more prominent; to expose the meta data about a piece of information to the viewer. Wordle.net offers a tag-cloud of your rss content. Is this actually valuable to a reader?
This blog's RSS content as word cloud. Do bloggers get out much?
Looking at this I have recently talked about pvp, time, and search a lot. But that is strange, and a slight misrepresentation. What would be ever cooler (geekier) is the same cloud to swirl and adapt based upon a time slider of the content by week. And then to aggregate the terms across the entire range, not just what was recently in the RSS feed.
This does add cool factor to the geeky types and digital bibliophiles, but I’m not sure it adds value to the average internet browser. Between the Tags, Categories, and the strange titles I think users have enough.
If you’re keen check out Wordle.net, and let me know how that silly name is supposed to be pronounced (stupid web 2.0 names).
Update 2nd Sep – Zupa has taken it to the next level (clever fellow), by adding a weekly wordle to the blog.
Update 18 Sep – What I really like about the Wordle tool is the colour selections you can make. Such a contrast.
And another on 29 Oct.
Then another now that we’re in March 2010.
And now one that we’re crusing through April, a year on from the last one.
TyphoonAndrew's - Eye of the Storm 
It’s a nice tool for simple qualitative analysis – by taking the words out of contextm you can look at the data with fresh eyes.
I pronounce it so that it rhymes with “turtle” but with a D. 🙂
Personally, I think the keyword density clouds are really useful for seeing how “meaty” a blog happens to be. Depending on its stated intention, if you don’t see many words that relate to that topic, it’s possible the author has shifted focus.
The rss content adjustments certainly change the results. I created another today and many of the terms have changed.
To really have analytical value it needs to perform this ranking over time.
eg. If you could subscribe to the service and get your cloud updated every time you post, and then also the top terms graphed over the length of your subscription.
It would also keep people visiting and using the service.
Is there something about hidden text not being parsed by search engines so these word clouds counter that?
Or am I making that up?
Sometimes I make stuff up without noticing see 😛
Regardless, I wanna wordle, as you said, all the cool kids have one!
Heya Zupa – you’re not making it up.
I think the Wordle system only processes the rss feeds that it can find. I tried using a website that did not have an rss feed, and it couldn’t proceed.
Also means that if your feed is processed by Feedburner rather than a standard blog engine, it might have different results. ie. a comment feed rather than a content feed.
Another Wordle Update – and its a better graphic at least.