least awful use of tag clouds ever

May 11, 2008 4:43 PM

Brand TagsTag a brand/logo and see what others have tagged it. Because "whatever it is they say a brand is, is what it is", depending on what your meaning of is is, I guess. Or play the reverse tag game and identify brands by their tags. And now, there's Celeb Tags! This will not wendell.

Disclosure: I'm posting this here now because I think it would be interesting to see what effect the MetaFilter community has on the tag cloud before the Diggers, Farkers, etc. get to it.

posted by wendell (38 comments total)

It would be interesting to see how different the results might be if the test was based on just name recognition vs. a corporate logo.
posted by itchylick at 4:56 PM on May 11, 2008

Starbucks results also entertaining. Top four in order: Coffee, expensive, burnt, bitter ...

Couldn't agree more.
posted by itchylick at 5:00 PM on May 11, 2008

Without a number of submissions to go on, it doesn't mean much. The relevant question is not: "How many times did one person need to submit "fuck" to make it the overwhelmigly biggest gle tag in the McDonald's cloud?", it is "Why did they bother?"
posted by yhbc at 5:24 PM on May 11, 2008

I think I left out a "however" in there somewhere.
posted by yhbc at 5:28 PM on May 11, 2008

I was just hoping we could get a good look at it before it's overrun by trolls... which it will be, inevitably...
posted by wendell at 5:37 PM on May 11, 2008

You're right, the internet! Steve Jobs is an asshole.
posted by stresstwig at 6:08 PM on May 11, 2008

I'm gonna tag everything with "wendell".
posted by puke & cry at 6:30 PM on May 11, 2008

Wow. Wal-Mart = Treason... Is this ballot-stuffing, or genuine?
posted by anthill at 6:35 PM on May 11, 2008

Someone tagged the american idol logo with "help! my penis is stuck in the toaster and this is my only form of communication!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!", which is nice.
posted by puke & cry at 6:42 PM on May 11, 2008 [1 favorite]

Hey! Somebody tagged everything with "wendell"!
posted by forallmankind at 6:49 PM on May 11, 2008

tiny opportunity for some culture jamming, here. . .

i tagged all the shoes and apparel with: sweatshops

etc.
posted by flotson at 7:00 PM on May 11, 2008

too easy to metafilter-game.
posted by blue_beetle at 7:07 PM on May 11, 2008

should add the tag 'lovecraft' to HP
posted by Fuka at 7:17 PM on May 11, 2008 [1 favorite]

successfully added "whores" to Apple. See what other people have tagged it.

Wait, this is supposed to be like free association, right?
posted by SassHat at 7:30 PM on May 11, 2008

That site would be a lot more interesting if it disallowed the actual name of the company. Can I guess which company this is? Er. yes. Because when faced with the apple logo, an enormous amount of people have just typed in "apple" as the first thing that comes to mind.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 7:33 PM on May 11, 2008

From the myspace tags:
help! my penis is stuck in the toaster and this is my only form of communication!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
posted by Citizen Premier at 7:38 PM on May 11, 2008

Heh, also from the website:
Sorry, you got it wrong. The brand was burt& rsquo;s bees.
(space added)
posted by Citizen Premier at 7:41 PM on May 11, 2008

This would be so much cooler if people weren't trying to game the system (e.g. flagging "ESPN" as "boring.")
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 7:43 PM on May 11, 2008

Jamming/Trolling/Gaming was inevitable and unavoidable... I was just hoping we'd beat the gamers, not BE the gamers. (It seems the most "wendell" tagged items are BBC and Twitter... I am stunned - and afraid to look at the CelebTags)
posted by wendell at 8:14 PM on May 11, 2008

I like how everyone's concerned about people gaming the system. Herein lies the paradox of web 2.0: Everybody gets a say, but everyone has an agenda.
posted by hellojed at 8:27 PM on May 11, 2008 [1 favorite]

Yikes. Lots of yucky stuff in the celeb tags. . .
posted by flotson at 8:42 PM on May 11, 2008

Geez, those celeb tags make me want to soak in bleach. Yuck.
posted by maryh at 8:48 PM on May 11, 2008

hehe some ad dude gonna say, 'what's with wendel? how do we own wendel?'

wendel is going to become an ad industry meme.

It needs more wendel

That's totally wendel

We need less wendel
posted by mattoxic at 9:53 PM on May 11, 2008

Geez, those celeb tags make me want to soak in bleach. Yuck.

As an American, I take my right to anonymously insult my betters very seriously.
posted by Mr. President Dr. Steve Elvis America at 10:21 PM on May 11, 2008

mattoxic, we need more wendell with 2 Ls
posted by wendell at 10:35 PM on May 11, 2008

wendell, the "L" key on this computer is whack

appolllllllllllogies
posted by mattoxic at 10:43 PM on May 11, 2008

no big deal, matttttttttoxic...
posted by wendell at 12:04 AM on May 12, 2008

Sarah Jessica Parker is, evidently, a hurf durf butter eater.
posted by loiseau at 12:21 AM on May 12, 2008

Oh! So is Paris Hilton. I wonder if they've ever discussed this impossibly rare coincidence.
posted by loiseau at 12:23 AM on May 12, 2008

omg, will smith too. And Brad Pitt. And... um.
posted by WalterMitty at 12:46 AM on May 12, 2008

Ok pretty much every celeb is a hurf-durf butter eater. I never knew Johhny Depp was one of them
posted by dabitch at 3:41 AM on May 12, 2008

I think there's been some confusion.
posted by Who_Am_I at 10:10 AM on May 12, 2008

Hi, I'm Noah. I put together brand tags.

First off, thanks for all the tags and comments.

A few thoughts:
- The gaming the system thing is kind of interesting in and of itself. I am keeping times and referrers with all tags, so should be interesting to look at the data at some point and see how things changed. Have also cut down on gaming the system a bit (though can't possibly keep on top of it all). Might be interesting to look at all the metafilter tags versus others ...
- Sorry about celeb tags being such a mess, put it up and then basically paid all my attention to brand tags. At some point will go clean it up.
- Love the Audi/olympics thing. Hadn't noticed that.

That's all, nothing of real substance to say, just mostly wanted to acknowledge that I was around and appreciate the links/feedback.
posted by nbrier at 10:42 AM on May 12, 2008

If it wasn't destined to fail, this could be a really interesting examination of brand recognition and meaning. If only the internet weren't so full of assholes.
posted by graventy at 10:44 AM on May 12, 2008

That said, I laughed pretty hard at the hurf durf tags.
posted by graventy at 10:45 AM on May 12, 2008

Well, we know how part of the internet tags this conversation. The google ads, as I write this, are for plastic surgery and weight loss.
posted by whump at 3:10 PM on May 12, 2008

wendell: "Disclosure: I'm posting this here now because I think it would be interesting to see what effect the MetaFilter community has on the tag cloud before the Diggers, Farkers, etc. get to it."

They're heeere...
posted by Rhaomi at 4:52 PM on May 19, 2008

Font-size: 350px and the word computer just doesn't work. You see "compu". Maybe it needs some normalization for long words and big fonts.

Other than that, really cool. Marketing must love it... For instance, American Express = exclusive, travel, corporate, rich. That's basically exactly on point with their marketing.
posted by smackfu at 10:04 AM on May 20, 2008