Signing Judge Sotomayor's Virtual Cast

I've written before about Tag Clouds.

Tags are words used to describe a document, picture, or any sort of web content. You could go further and say, tag clouds ascribe text-mediated meaning to symbols. On the bottom-left of this blog you'll see a list of tags. They're sort of indexed, searchable keywords.

A Tag Cloud is a graphic depiction of tags. Usually, the size of the letters indicates the frequency with which the tag is used - if there's twenty articles tagged with Bush, and three articles about Cheney, the tag cloud might look like this:

Bush

Cheney

The Obama administration, which is still running BarackObama.com, has an webpage running where supporters can express get-well wishes for Supreme Court nominee Sotomayor, who recently hurt her foot. The text comments are reviewed by staff (dang!) and they periodically update the tag cloud. The conceit is that you're signing Judge Sotomayor's virtual cast.



There's a few things about this that impress me.

• They've still got the web channel from their campaign operating - the channel's still open.
• They're demonstrating that they grok the web.
• They're reaching part of their audience without traditional media as the intermediary.