TagCrowd is a web application for visualizing word frequencies in any user-supplied text by creating what is popularly known as a tag cloud or text cloud.
It was created by Daniel Steinbock, a doctoral student in Design and Education at Stanford University.
Today, text clouds are primarily used for navigation and visualization on Web 2.0 sites that employ user-generated metadata (tags) as a categorization scheme. (Flickr is a good example.)
TagCrowd is doing something different.
When we look at a text cloud, we see not only an informative, beautiful image that communicates much in a single glance, we see a whole new perspective on text.
TagCrowd is taking tag clouds far beyond their original function:
- as topic summaries for speeches and written works
- as blog tool or website analysis for search engine optimization (SEO)
- for visual analysis of survey data
- as brand clouds that let companies see how they are perceived by the world
- for data mining a text corpus
- for helping writers and students reflect on their work
- as name tags for conferences, cocktail parties or wherever new collaborations start
- as resumes in a single glance
- as visual poetry
The list goes on and continues to grow.
In the future, TagCrowd will develop into a suite of experimental tools and tutorials that empower social and collaborative uses for text clouds and related visualizations.
Our mission is to push the innovation envelope in online and face-to-face communities of all stripes.