Tag Clouds: Why?
Maybe my brain just doesn’t work in a way that appreciates them, but I really don’t see the point of tag clouds. Sure, adding a cloud makes your site feel oh-so 2.0, but does it really accomplish anything? Is there some advantage over a sorted list? Do people actually use tag clouds?
I find them annoying because they:
- Take up excess space (especially for the larger font sizes).
- Are hard to decipher, as the text is in a variety of sizes and is thus difficult to scan.
- Feel like a trend, followed mindlessly.
When the information is useful I would prefer it to be presented as sorted and/or coloured list of a uniform font size. I for one would be quite happy to see these useless jumbles of letters disappear!
