Rock Creek Blog, Meet Wordle

Posted by: Natalya Minkovsky, Director of Strategy & User Experience Apr 19, 2011 0 Comments

As a professional “word nerd,” I’ve been intrigued by tag clouds ever since I first saw one on Flickr. So once in a while, I like to plug this blog’s RSS feed into Wordle, a site that generates word clouds from an Atom or RSS feed, del.icio.us user name, or text you’ve copied over. The more often you use a word, the larger it appears in the graphic. You can choose your fonts, colors, and layout preferences, but sometimes it’s more fun to hit “randomize.”

What does Rock Creek’s blog Wordle look like today? Here are a few “randomized” Wordles I created earlier:

Not surprisingly, “government,” “mobile,” and “content” are the largest words, meaning we use these three words most often on this blog. Other words related to the services we offer, including “social” and “media,” are also prominent in the Wordle. One word that surprised me is “Kansas,” which appears to be about the same size as “Facebook.” Since the weekly Rock Creek Roundup often profiles state government innovation, this could indicate that Kansas has been featured multiple times—go Kansas!

Although Wordle is a fun little web toy, there are actually quite a few educational uses for it as well. Have you done something creative with a Wordle? Let us know in the comments.

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Natalya Minkovsky

Director of Strategy & User Experience

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