

Visual.ly launches social network for data visualizations - romymisra
http://blog.visual.ly/visual-ly-launches-social-network-for-data-visualization/

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monkeyfacebag
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.

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danso
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...](http://blog.visual.ly/12-infographics-about-running-to-motivate-you-
out-the-door/)

* 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.

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crisnoble
>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.

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colevscode
"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/>)

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nod
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.

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sixQuarks
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.

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jblock
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.

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

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

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

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vamsee
Anyone else think the logo resembles that of Google Play?

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hcarvalhoalves
Social everything!

