Del.icio.us, the social bookmarking system, has gotten a facelift. There seem to be a number of enhancements, including auto-completion of tags, but what stands out to me is the "cloud" option for viewing one's list of tags. In the "cloud," the font size and weight of each tag increase according to the number of entries it contains. This is a technique I've previously seen at 43 Things, and it provides some quick visual feedback on what the "major" topics are.

Another new feature at del.icio.us is "bundles," which appear to be a way of grouping related tags. Whether that is a step towards actual hierarchy (which would be very un-del.icio.us-like but which some users create means of simulating) or something looser, I'm not sure, because I haven't delved into these yet.

Both features are adaptations to the success of del.icio.us. As people put more and more of their bookmarks into it, and use more and more tags to describe them (I have 719 bookmarks and 205 tags), scale becomes an issue. The flat alphabetical tag list, while admirably simple, was becoming overwhelming in its own right. I'm glad to see the del.icio.us folks continuing to refine what was already a great service.