In user interface visual aids, I love tag clouds in blogs. See this for example for Montreal Tech Watch:
You can then conclude that Montreal Tech Watch covers entrepreneurship, startups, mobile and to a certain extent, minor topics like web2.0, blogging, media and telecommunications. If you are a blogger, you may write for instance an official “contact” or “about” page that tells you will be blogging about advertising, entreprise tools and the like, but if your tag cloud shows that the most covered topics in your blog is instead video games and web2.0, it tells more to your readers.
I have thought this morning about using the same “visual map” to understand what is covered by local blogs, regardless about what they proclaim. The following sums up mentions of the keywords in all Montreal blogs for the last month:
advertising (492) akoha (28) amazon (124) angel (74) apple (775) austin hill (43) barcamp (129) bell (223) benjamin yoskovitz (430) blog (+1000) canada (+1000) carl mercier (51) clixconnect (6) CMS (41) css (66) defensio (27) dell (121) democamp (67) digg (156) entrepreneur (775) entreprise (775) facebook (319) flickr (299) fred ngo (44) google (+1000) gmail (237) hugh mc guire (240)ilovetoplay (7) innovation (286) iphone (248) ipod (319) kakiloc (13) librivox (45) linux (204) marketing (752) marc andre cournoyer (126) michel leblanc (153) microsoft (+1000) media (+1000) mobile (453) montreal (+1000) msn (113) mycarpoolstation (7) myspace (367) open source (203) patrick tanguay (396) philippe martin (396)python (52) podcast(274) praized (36) quebec (506) quebecor (83) rogers (136) ruby on rails (174) SEO (52) standoutjobs (66) social network (101) startup (405) sylvain carle (50) telus (105) tungle (35) ubisoft (121) VC (124) video (831) viral (107) vista (249) wiki (174) web2.0 (123) yahoo (462) youtube (681) yulbiz (121) yulblog (130)
A few comments:
- everybody has facebook on their minds right now but google, microsoft, apple, and yahoo gets much more mentions. Even myspace is more “popular” than facebook.
- Benjamin Yoskovitz gets a whopping 430 mentions in Montréal blogs. Philippe Martin and Patrick Tanguay also gets each 396 mentions. If you care to explain how they got to “dominate” the montreal blogosphere, leave a comment :-)
- Standoutjobs is the most talked about startup, followed by librivox. It’s surprising to see that the people behind each company is more quoted than the company itself. Even Marc-Andre Cournoyer is mentionned 3 times more than his company (standoutjobs).
- the iPhone is mentionned 248 times even though it’s not even avalaible in Canada
- iPod is the most popular topic in technology, followed by Vista, linux and then ruby on rails. Meanwhile, specific keywords like CSS, SEO, CMS are very rare.
Comments
macournoyer September 21, 2007
macournoyer September 21, 2007
How did you collect this data ?
Heri September 21, 2007
in my screen, i see you are mentionned pretty much every day at :
- your blog
- silicon island
- standoutjobs blog
- defensio blog
- furtivecode.com
- espresso (yannick manuri)
- djief’s blog
- jerome paradis’s blog
- fred brunel’s blog
- montreal tech watch
- rise of the little guy
- montreal tech league
- some french guy
etc.
Maybe you were not aware of it because they didn’t link to your blog, but that’s what I have in the overall result.
Ben Yoskovitz September 21, 2007
I talk a lot after all…
Heri September 21, 2007
heri September 21, 2007
montreal blogosphere tag cloud http://tinyurl.com/2y8jwx
stephdau September 22, 2007
I’m not sure how you generated the cloud (modified v of the WP plugin you use on the site?), but an instant way to convince the above commenters (hi guys) would be to have links on the tags pointing to the list of the entries that where counted.
But of course, it’s easy to make a suggestion when suggesting someone else does the work. :p
stephdau September 22, 2007
That’s what I’m currently doing in my spare times (ie: at night, now 2:32 AM) for a project a few WP plugin devs and I will announce in the next few weeks. :)
All I have to say:
- iPhoney has its limits…
- Apple/Rogers, hurry…
- Even the Touch is only due on Sept 28th…
But we’re moving along.
Heri September 22, 2007
As you can guess, the study is not truly “scientific” but like the map of the web, it provides hints about what’s happenning in Montreal.
There is a better way to do it with Google Coop but that would be when there is more avalaible time.
also about the iPhone: I am planning to get the iPod Touch, i am not counting much on Rogers.
thanks but the way. it’s appreciated :-)
stephdau September 22, 2007
re: Rogers: I had a ray of hope a few weeks back through the iPhone Europe launch rumour mill (b4) and your post re: Rogers releasing HSDPA in Mtl this fall. But nope, it was Europe only, and they still got an EDGE version… Oh well.
re: touch: I was kinda waiting for the screen issues to be resolved to consider one too, which they now seem to be.
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=358071
My rule of thumb is that if there’s no Apple/Rogers joint announcement by Nov 1st, it ain’t gonna happen this year (holiday season’s point-of-no-return [would actually be on the late side]).
stephdau September 22, 2007
Heri September 22, 2007
The problems began this week. The RSS feed is also broken.
The problem is WP was untouched. (it was last updated 2 weeks ago)
about the Touch: it will be the 1st generation all right, and I am expecting problems like the one you just described.
stephdau September 22, 2007
re: comments: feel free to email me at the address attached to this comment if you’d like me to take a look. Call it a small contribution for the content you bring us. ;)
I never knew » Blog Archive » Bunch of Links September 26, 2007
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