Visual.ly launches social network for data visualizations | Hacker News Reader

Visual.ly launches social network for data visualizations

blog.visual.ly

58 pointsromymisra13 comments

This site appears to be focused on the design aspects of visualizations, which is a shame. While I agree that design is an important consideration in info visualization, it's clearly less important than accurately representing the underlying data. I've seen far too many "infographics" which either misrepresented or presented false interpretations of data.

One of the things that bothers me about Visual.ly is its casual conflation of "data visualizations" and "infographics". The two aren't the same thing, yet there's really not a clear distinction in how Visual.ly talks about them.

e.g. http://blog.visual.ly/12-infographics-about-running-to-motiv...

* edit: I just signed up and tried to create a data visualization. But it looks like the only thing you can create is to signup through Facebook and then modify an existing infographic template.

>I just signed up and tried to create a data visualization. But it looks like the only thing you can create is to signup through Facebook and then modify an existing infographic template.

You can create any infographic you want and link to (submit) it, you do not have to use the 'create an infographic' link.

I think that visual.ly is more about finding and sharing great infographics and data visualizations from around the web. Designers can upload their own work and showcase it to people who are into that kind of thing. Yes there are some bad infographics, like there are bad designs on dribble, but there are some great ones too.

It bugged me too, though apparently the definition of the two is widely debated elsewhere as well: http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-a-data-v...

(Personally I treat data visualizations as "apply visual libraries to dataset in R/Python/etc" and infographics as "present story with stats using pretty typography and pop art", but it doesn't have to be that way...)

"Today, we are launching the world’s first social network for data visualization"

Doesn't IBM's Many Eyes deserve that title?

(http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/)

I think you might give the title to Swivel, which beat Many Eyes by a couple months. [http://eagereyes.org/criticism/swivel-vs-many-eyes] I'm not sure which one of them lasted longer. [http://eagereyes.org/criticism/the-rise-and-fall-of-swivel] In contrast, Tableau Public headed in the opposite direction from both of those, striving not to be a social network but instead focus on being embedded elsewhere.

I think the number of true viz geeks in the world is dwarfed by the number of people who are interested in particular data. But I'm not even sure that Visual.ly is trying to be anything more than a niche network here.

Do you guys think the future of social networking will be niche social networks like this, instead of facebook? I've been getting more and more annoyed with facebook lately, it's becoming more like Myspace every day. As the masses use it, I find it to become more useless.

Other than following my family and very close friends, it's annoying. I'd rather be part of a social network that I'm passionate about.

The aspects of Facebook that annoy you or I are the exact reasons why other people embrace it. It's become a part of people's lives--more than just a web application.

I think the tech community might gravitate towards these niche solutions, but it'll take a lot of time and poor decisions on Facebook's part to get several hundred million people to forsake it.

I would actually say neither. As a technology matures I would expect it to become a part of the day-to-day fabric. So, what I am willing to bet is more and more useful sites adding social networking embedded into the sites.

Also they got some interesting advisors[1], including Alexis Ohanian (Reddit founder) and Hiten Shah (from Kissmetrics).

[1] http://visual.ly/about/investors

I can highly recommend their Blog. Every day almost new articles.

Anyone else think the logo resembles that of Google Play?

Social everything!

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