Sorry, there has been no update for long time because I was quite busy. But the project is still alive and here is a good news for you. Following a popular demand the amount of clouds you can simultaneously create with Tagul is extended to 20.
Have a good luck!
The short answer is: yes, while in beta.
You know, it costs money to develop the service and keep it running. I am not a big corporation and certainly cannot do it for charity. So eventually I am forced to monetize Tagul. I don’t have the exact monetization strategy by now, but probably it will be some mix between embedded in clouds ads and a paid subscription. Also I have a strong intention to leave it free for non-profit use.
Therefore if you consider using Tagul clouds for your enterprise please be advised.
A month has passed since Tagul became available to public. Since then Tagul has been visited by 5,567 people from 83 countries and virtually a thousand users have registered.
Great result! I couldn’t ever expect such interest in the very first month. It makes me more motivated in improving the service and keep providing you the best tag clouds in the web. Thank you very much for your interest!
P.S. More features are coming soon!
Stay tuned!
I am happy to say that now Tagul has more fonts to play with! I am sure you’ve already noticed new front page cloud built using new fonts. Enjoy it!
Recently Jonathan Feinberg, the creator of Wordle wrote a blog post about Tagul. If you don’t know Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” that are very similar to Tagul. In this post I am going to explain the difference between Tagul and Wordle and expose the motives that led to Tagul creation.
At first, I don’t like being mentioned as a person “who identifies himself only as Alex”. I admit there is a lack of info about me so far and therefore I am going to spot some light on my bio.
I was born in 1982 in Moscow, Russia. So I am 27 years old at the moment of writing this post and still located there. I am keen on computers since childhood. My first programming experience was altering BASIC code on an Atari computer to get more lives in an action game 
. I was 10 years old then. Later on I got Master’s degree on computer science from Moscow State University. Despite my loving programming I have never worked as a programmer. My latest position is a business analyst in a bank. I am married and have a wonderful 2 years old son.
Having that said, I felt unsatisfied in my professional life being an employee of a bank. It was quite far from technology and real challenge. So I desided to try myself as an entrepreneur in the internet area, as it was the easiest way for a person with programming skills. I spent some time looking for a great idea to implement and once I noticed that there were a lot of tag clouds in the internet, but virtually all of them were ugly and didn’t look like clouds at all. So I decided to make a web service that would enable users to create true tag clouds. Here is an example of my early work: 
Then I found Wordle and was amazed by its capability of placing text inside text. I was inspired by this idea so much, so I decided to implement it in Tagul. It was a tough task but I did it. It takes me a year of hard work in my spare time (free from full time job) to implement the idea from scratch to early beta stage where Tagul is now. Here is an example of a modern Tagul cloud:
Wordle was designed to be just a toy. Wordle clouds cannot be used as in the way tag clouds are usually used, like being embedded on a web page and serving as navigation units. That leaves the niche that Tagul is intended to fulfil. Tagul clouds are not toys and designed to be used on blogs, web pages or any kind of sites as a replacement of ordinary tag clouds. Each tag in Tagul cloud is linked with an URL and is “clickable” that enables visitors to use it for navigation. Also Tagul utilizes widely used flash platform (instead of less common java platform in Wordle) that is light weight (~50kb per cloud vs ~150kb) and stores the clouds on a CDN to deliver clouds to wide audience instanlty. Tagul has some features that Wordle doesn’t, like custom shapes selection and multiply fonts usage in one cloud. Finally, Tagul is a startup and I am going to make a profit on this venture some day.
Today I have finally completed the forums for Tagul. So now if you face with problems, want a new feature or just have something to say, you are welcome to use the forums.
I’am sad to admit that there were problems with sending sign up (password) emails, but it should be fixed for now. So if you registered and haven’t received your password, just reset it using lost password link. If you still experience problems with signing up to the service please contact me at . Sorry for inconvenience.
Tagul has been reviewed by Killerstartups recently. Despite the review being concise, the author precisely stated that Tagul clouds are eye-candy that make your site’s visitors experience more joyful. That is exactly what Tagul clouds are intended for.
That review attracted significant attention to the service and by this moment Tagul have virtually a hundred users signed up. Probably it is a little more attention than I expected it to be at the early stage (the service has been up just for 1 week already), but anyway it is very pleasant to get such a positive feedback.
Stay tuned!
Hello! I am Alex, the founder and creator of Tagul, a web service that enables you to create gorgeous tag clouds. Nowadays tag clouds are an essential part of the web, they are some kind of a medium shortly telling a first time visitor what your site is about and helping him to navigate through.
But don’t you think that the most of tag clouds used today are urgly and boring?… I do! Therefore I created Tagul to provide web sites owners with best tag clouds in the web in order to enrich users experience and satisfaction.
Currently the project is rather far from achieving this goal. It is in early beta and I am the only developer who works on it. But today Tagul is going live with a hope on great success, solid future growth and long happy living . Hello world!