Infographics can Tell a Great Story
Infographics are very popular at the moment, particularly with the rise of sites like Pinterest where images and visuals of statistics can be shared. Are you one of those who think that we see too many infographics these days? Well be prepared for a few more. Visual.ly, which offers an online infographics tool to create instant visualisations of data, has launched its first public infographics product out of beta. Visual.ly is a great infographics tool that allows you to generate a range of infographics almost instantly based on social metrics such as Twitter or Facebook data. Relatively new still they are adding to their categories. Very easy to use and free and you can see a simple example below that tool less than 10 minutes to generate.
The infographics tool service lets users take publicly-available data such as information from a Twitter hashtag or a Facebook feed, and then select a template (currently five, with each having two to three variations within it) to instantly visualise it. It will also team up with third parties and brands to offer other data feeds to users: one, for example, will involve sports statistics from ESPN.
Infographics tools are not just for number crunchers
While infographics seem like the kind of thing that would mostly be the domain of number-crunching analysts and journalists, created for consumption by the wider public, the use of Visual.ly’s beta — launched last year — testifies to there being a bigger audience for actually making these pictures firsthand. Stew Langille, the company’s founder and CEO, tells TechCrunch that since launching that beta, it has seen the creation of over 11,000 infographics and seen 2 million visitors per month. And more than than 500,000 people have used the specially-created Twitter Visualizer since it launched in July 2011. “There’s a reason why we’re seeing so many infographics,” he says. “It’s because it’s just a better way of telling a story.”
Infographics tools can visualise your story
I have two twitter accounts, one that I use for business and a personal account that is dedicated to following my favourite sports. Here are the result of a twitter account faceoff! These infographics are easy to produce – this one took less than ten minutes.
