

Ask HN: Has anyone ever clicked on a tag cloud? - tomkin

I know tag clouds are more or less passé, but they are still pretty rampant. I have no idea why anyone would just click on a word because it&#x27;s bigger than other words. Can someone explain why these became popular?
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ggchappell
> I have no idea why anyone would just click on a word because it's bigger
> than other words.

The point is that the size of a word _means_ something. A large word is
typically intended to indicate, "Here is something that his person is talking
about, that a lot of other people are also talking about. Click here to see
what others have to say."

> Can someone explain why these became popular?

I suppose this happened, in part, because they seemed to have some reasonable-
sounding theory behind them (see above).

The cool factor was probably more important, though. UI trends often ignore
usability issues, after all, and tag clouds are an automatically generated
example of the kind of "messy" art that became popular a decade or two ago.

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Fzznik
Glancing at a tag cloud is a great way to figure out what someone's blog tends
to write the most about (the biggest tags) and what they write the least about
(the smallest tags). I've been known occasionally to arrive at someone's blog
to read some article, glance at their tag cloud and see maybe some other
interesting topics they've written about---especially if it's one of the
bigger ones---which I do click on and sometimes discover more interesting
content on their blog as a result.

So yes, I've clicked on them. But not very often. But certainly "look at" more
than I actually "click on", so there is still some value in these to some
degree even if people don't click on them.

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codegeek
Funny because everytime I see one, it seems dirty, spammy and UI gone wrong. I
never click on those. Just doesn't feel right. But it could just be me. Not to
mention that I almost feel I have dyslexia [0]

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyslexia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyslexia)

~~~
debt
I agree. They don't seem generally useful. I guess it acts more as an
analytics tool so people can quickly see the most popular tags. In terms of a
navigation tool, it's kind of useless. It's an archaic form of "trending
topics".

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ctb_mg
Yes, I have, but only because I was looking for items under a certain
category. I would still have gotten the same usefulness if it were just a
regular list of tags as opposed to a cloud.

My opinion is that tag clouds are better served as art than as functional UI
elements...

~~~
sejje
I like seeing tag clouds of "trending topics" or something, yes. Sort-of like
a stylized graph.

I don't think I've ever used one to navigate.

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rartichoke
I never click on them either. Come to think of it I never click on a typical
archive either. I'm interested in the content, not that you have 17 posts back
in October 2008.

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angdis
FWIW, I thought they were cool when they came out and used a lot in the
original Delicious. I still like them! I do click!

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mulligan
I've clicked on the one they used to have at theeconomist.com

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Meltdown
Sometimes... when it pokes me in the eye.

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by_Seeing
Not once

