BP4_Visual.ly

Visual.ly is one of the best inventions of the 21^st Century! It’s an application that will eventually allow any of us to create visualizations of data; eventually because while it’s no longer in beta, it’s also still not ready for the public (coming very soon!). However, you may have already seen some of its posters on the web, hundreds of which are showcased at its website. Here is one that relates to my last Web 2.0 tool review on volunteering.

Why create a visual image from data, you might ask? Because infographics and data visualizations help us see data for what it is or isn’t. For example, by looking at the data in the volunteer poster, I realized that it has to do with Americans who volunteer their time, energy and resources to organizations in this country. Part of that is because the poster’s data comes from VolunteeringinAmerica.gov. But it made me wonder, if Sparked is unique in allowing us to directly serve organizations outside of the United States. And either way, what that data might look like.

Visual.ly will give anyone who has data to share a hand in design because it will feature a “plug and play” and “grab and go” format; however, it is more than a place to create a beautiful poster. Once you create an account, it becomes your portfolio, where you can promote your work and track how popular it is among other Visual.ly community members. For the data-minded designer, I could really see this site taking off, making our world and its stories more engaging.

What’s more, for Visual.ly this is just the beginning. Take a look at this brief video on its vision:

Data can show an evolution, a history, a network, a return on investment, a relationship, an anatomy, a direction, etc. What will your data show? How will you use Visual.ly?

Can't wait to get started? The one thing Visual.ly will allow you to do now is "twitterize" yourself. By connecting to the website via your Twitter account, you can generate an infographic of your Twitter persona based on your tweets. Mine reveals what I already know: I've tweeted a lot about gamification (@eecorra).

My Twitter Persona