A TAG CLOUD TO PUT THE UNIVERSE OF BLOGS IN ORDER

With the growth of blogs and the so-called Web 2.0, the traditional categories used to put the available information in order have become more limited. Instead, new ways to organize such "digital disorder" have emerged, such as the "tag cloud", which we have incorporated to ORT Virtual Campus’ Web of Weblogs.

Unlike the categories that integrate the catalogue of a library, for instance, which are generally elaborated by experts in classification, these "tag clouds" are created by users communities. This new way to organize the information has other special features such as:

• The categories are not in hierarchical order, but they are presented in a more horizontal, ‘chaotic’ way. The former are general, whereas the latter tend to be more specific (in our case, some of them are: Services, Design, Final Project, Campus, Technology, 1st year Almagro campus, 3rd year Belgrano campus, etc.).

• A "tag cloud" is associated to a new type of navigation on the Internet, which is known as "faceted navigation", where depending on the users’ choices, searching options narrow down. In this way, when selecting a label, we will be able to see all the information that is associated to that theme and can specify other future searches.

These new ways to organize the information follow the increasingly evident tendency towards mobility and permanent reordering of the information. In this context, in which we have to handle large amounts of information, textual galaxies or content nebulas, organizers like "tag clouds" will be fundamental tools.