Sam Lawrence: Using Tag Clouds As Tea Leaves

San Francisco: Sam Lawrence continues his exploration into the divinatory qualities of Many Eyes tag clouds in a post where he is comparing Mix keynotes from 2007 and 2008:

The biggest shift?

[from Go Big Always - Past and Future: Two conference faces of Microsoft, same week by Sam Lawrence]

1. Enterprise search is now important. […]

2. Microsoft Online and Sharepoint Online. […]

3. “Contoso rocks” is big. [A fictional company used by M’soft in their media.]

The following important things from two years ago are no longer important: internet explorer, collaboration platform, structure, excel services, and business data. That’s SO 2006.

More than the Microsoft subject matter, I think the technique is fascinating, and should be more widely applied. For example, a tag cloud developed in real time from the twitterati during the Lacygate meltdown at SXSW would have been interesting. Might still be… Sam?