Best Of MetaFilter

social media, social networking, social computing tag cloud (#2) by daniel_iversen (cc by)

Tag clouds were all the rage in 2005, as a way to show items most often used. They were added to MetaFilter (and subsites) back then but have been mostly forgotten. MeFi member Homeboy Trouble stayed up late Saturday night, crunched some numbers with our infodump of data and weighted recent tags more heavily than older ones and got some interesting results:

The new hot tags have lots of current technology references as well; ios, ipad, android, ereader, tumblr, cloud, win7, kindle, droid, app, chrome, etsy, socialmedia, facebook, tablet, twitter. But there's a few new trends bespeaking a more diverse audience; lgbt, transgender, queer, polyamory, kink; trauma and ptsd; preschool, daycare and nanny; awkward and boundaries, psychiatrist and selfesteem, lowcarb, radiation, newjob, catfood, horse, bedbugs, istanbul, introvert, whiskey.

At my desk by chrismear (cc by)

Long time user holgate paints a lovely picture of the weird spot MetaFilter existed in at its start, why it was different, and how it's different now:

the MeFi of 2000 was populated by people who gave a shit about the web as a distinct thing in itself, while the MeFi of 2012 quite rightly treats the web as something as pervasive and enveloping as the air we breathe.

When user dancestoblue mentioned a friend sought privacy on planes by "putting a string up his nose" user cybercoitus interruptus asked "how does that work?" dancestoblue explained it in detail (with photos!)

"I believe we can now state, scientifically and unequivocally, that you can just by god knot you some heavy string up and poke it up your nose and get ready for even the jerkiest jerks to give you some space."

dancestoblue showed us it's easier than it sounds and after viewing what it looks like, I'd agree you'd probably be ignored for most air travel if you did it.