Tag clouds and cynical bloggers, by Jeffrey Veen

Tag clouds and cynical bloggers

TagCloud is a relatively new service that attempts to automate the creation of folksonomies. The service starts off by asking for feed URLs, or an OPML file, and then chews through the content doing some sort of word frequency analysis. Then, it spits out a "cloud" of terms sized by usage. The result is very much like the way Flickr, del.icio.us, or Technorati display popular tags -- except these terms should be linking to interesting topics made up of posts from just your feed subscriptions.

My tag cloud, wiht the term 'apparently' highlighted

So I've been following mine for a few days now, and for the most part my cloud fills with the usual suspects: weblog, google, ipod, armstrong. But occasionally something pops out based on a news story or trend that the blog community picks up on. In fact, there must have been a recent wave of skepticism in the feeds I read, as the term "apparently" appeared my cloud. Clicking through where dozens of usage of the word by bloggers not fully believing the things they were linking to:

"...apparently, the Bush administration is now trying to..."

"...podcasting is apparently jumping to traditional media..."

"...apparently, it's now even illegal to think about making P2P software..."

Which makes me wonder, do I read a particularly cynically blogroll? Or is this a characteristic of the medium in general?

This entry was written by Jeffrey Veen and posted 7 July 2005 at 9:35 AM. It was filed under Technology. | View blog reactions

Comments

1. On 7 July 2005 at 9:59 AM Steve Mulder wrote:

Blame your cynical roots. Ever heard the one about the Calvinist who stubbed his toe? He said, "Thank god that's over with."

2. On 7 July 2005 at 12:06 PM Marc van Veen wrote:

>Which makes me wonder, do I read a particularly cynically blogroll?

Apparently.

3. On 7 July 2005 at 1:19 PM John Athayde wrote:

I was all stoked to write "Apparently, Jeff thinks we're a cynical bunch," but Marc beat me to the play.

I do think it's typical of the writing style of many webloggers (at least that I read) where people will point out that something is basically crazy by saying "Apparently, we can no longer butter our bread without having an FBI operative check our intent of buttering said bread."

It's obviously biting sarcasm and not true, but It projects the attitude of the writer towards whatever he/she/it is complaing about.

So yeah. Apparently.

4. On 7 July 2005 at 6:49 PM Joe T wrote:

Apparently all you bloggers talk the same...

5. On 8 July 2005 at 4:11 AM Roy Schestowitz wrote:

With your recommendation I built myself a cloud to discover a flaw: if a single feed contains a term that repeats over and over again, that term (tag) can dominate.

6. On 8 July 2005 at 10:04 PM Charles wrote:

Honestly, I think people just use the word "apparently" way too much. It's become a linguistic cliche, and apparently people use it without even thinking about it anymore. See how natural that was? And unnecessary to boot?

My opinion is that apparently is a junk food word--absolutely no nutritional value at all. Think about it: when was the last time you saw a sentence with "apparently" in it that would have suffered in the least without it?

7. On 8 July 2005 at 11:11 PM Andrew Kaufmann wrote:

Charles makes a good point -- it is a crutch word. I think you see it a lot in blogging for several reasons:

1) Bloggers often aren't professional writers. And ones that ARE professional writers probably post in "informal writing mode" more often than not. So it would follow that slang and crutch words show up. One of my bad habits is overusing the "--" to expand on a point. I've already done it once this comment, and had to stop myself from doing it more. ;)

2) People stick it in front of things they know is conjecture as a sort of way of saying "well, I'm making this up but my observations make it seem true to me!" I think it's a self-defense mechanism, a way of protecting themselves if they're wrong in their projection. Blogging is a medium that embraces the conjecture. So it would follow, at least in my mind (there's the self-defense mechanism, just not with the word "apparently") that words like "apparently" would show up a lot.

3) People see other people doing it, so it shows up more. It's prevalent in blogging, bloggers read bloggers, and it continues.

I'm sure I'm guilty of all three!

8. On 13 July 2005 at 10:52 AM ..ak wrote:

I believe it's the character of the medium in general.

The weblog community only writes about the things that are worth noting. Usually these things of note are related to something out of the ordinary, confusing, or contrary to our current thinking.

For example, let's take a small software company. They create a great tool that's easy to use for a small niche market, nobody expect the niche market audience takes notice. Let's say that same tool is discovered to have malicious features, every privacy advocate group picks it up, then the privacy advocate weblogs, and then to everyone else.

There is a catch.

If you write about the good stuff that happens the conversation is only one way: you tell us what you think and we accept it because we think it's common sense.

Writers keep telling me this: if there is no conflict, there is no excitement.

9. On 3 August 2005 at 1:07 PM djchuang wrote:

well, great link, very useful.. rather than using it on my feeds, or some other set of feeds, I've used it on my own website (what a novel concept!) and I think that's one of the prime opportunities to activate folksonomy on one's own websites (and could be done on a corporate site, org site, whatever.. long as that site is blog rss driven)