Do You Tagxedo?

Have you seen this nifty program called Tagxedo? Just give the link to your Web page or Twitter account or news site and it whips out a tag cloud of appropriate terms.

It will even force them into a shape. And you can pick and choose colors to match your style. Here’s the tagxedo cloud for my Web site (April, was a pretty big month for me, apparently…):

I’m fascinated by how the seemingly random words fit together…and I’m curious about the algorithm used…I only did one post about Frog and Toad and yet Toad features fairly prominently in the graph. You can him in bright yellow in the upper left leaf of the clover. Frog doesn’t get half as nice the recognition.

Here’s the tag cloud for my twitter account:

It looks like I should go edit out the “Published a Blog Post” reference I have on the auto-post to twitter when I update my blog. But, I do like how my #FollowFriday friends are featured.

There seems to be a few inconsistencies in the system. Because of the date format on my blog “th” is a big hitter in the cloud (today is the 7th of September…see?) and the word “the” is very tiny in the graph. Realistically, it ought to be the focal point of the graph with everything else wrapped around it, as much as it’s used. Ideally, the program should bar it (and other oft-used words) from the pretty picture. I think that would make it more accurate.

Still, it’s a fascinating snap-shot. I think I’ll try it again in a few months to see how things change (or if they don’t)!