Have you heard of the Tweet Cloud?

Have you heard of TweetCloud? It's one of those applications you use with Twitter to create a cloud of words you've written about or retweeted on Twitter from a chosen time span. Between prepping for the upcoming ASJA (American Society of Journalists and Authors) conference, where I'll be either presenting or moderating for three separate panels, and the need to rest, I stopped by this site to see what it's all about.


Pictured above is the cloud generated for me from the 379 updates I wrote in the past three months. It includes the top 48 words used in my content on Twitter. Why 48? You get to pick the number of top picks, and I chose 48 to represent my age. You also pick the range of time you'd like included in the cloud. I let the program use its defaut--the most current time frame.

It seems to be a good way to know what your focus is on the social media network. You can discern whether or not your message is where it needs to be, relative to your purpose. I am pleased to see the most obvious highlighted words in my cloud are: thanks, love, bike, Arizona, travel, writing. This makes me feel as though I'm representing myself appropriately.

It might be interesting to go back to a time frame where I know this was not the case and compare clouds. For now, however, I have other work to finish.


What do you think you can learn from your TweetCloud? Do you think it would represent you well? If you decide to try it out, come back and post a comment with the link to your cloud and share your thoughts here.