Top Ten Best Visualization Tools for Social Media, Blogosphere, Internet & News

by Ron Callari

8- New York Times' Visualization Lab

The New York Times features an actual "Visualization Lab" where you can create visual representations of data and information using the "Many Eyes" technology by IBM Research. Here is a Wordle of Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. Note the larger words, where greater weight is given to words that are repeated. Worldles also have their own Web site and one can generate "wordles" for any topic they choose. (note: The TOP TEN graphic for this blog was developed in Wordle).

New York Time's Visualization Lab

9- Debategraph

The global debate mapping found at Debategraph helps to define debates. Their goal is to make the best arguments on all sides of any public debate. Every debate map is provisional and open to iterative improvements by anyone who participates.This is must-have for debate teams and even some one at the level of our Secretary of State, Ms. Hillary Clinton. This particular map is working with Christina Amanpour at CNN to follow her TV newscast and the debates that surface weekly pertaining to the issues in these Middle Eastern countries.

A short introduction to Debategraph.org; and how it helps groups explore, make sense of, and evaluate complex issues is shown in this video.

10- Twingly Screensaver

Twingly screensaver is visualizing the global blogosphere activity in real time. Similar to ZenNews (#1), you can forget RSS readers. With Twingly screensaver you get a 24/7 stream of all (viewer discretion advised) blog activity, straight to your screen.

To use the screensaver you need a PC with Windows and a graphics card supporting OpenGL. If you enable Asian language support in Windows, you can expand your blog coverage to the Middle East. Without any marketing, Twingly.com currently serves 25M+ search results per month. Download instructions are found on this home page, complete with a YouTube instructional one-minute tutorial.

Hope you enjoyed this list. There are absolutely 100s of other visualization tools you can research online. This TOP TEN grouping are my favorites. Vote for your favorite in our Best Visualization Tool POLL, and also let us know if we omitted one of the visualization tools you use in our comment section below.

Ron Callari
Social Media, Semantic Technology, Digitial Media & Trends Writer
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Comments

Nov 2, 2009
by Anonymous

heatmaps

Thanks for this - very useful! In reference to the heatmaps section, i have just found a new tool that also offers real time videos of browsers sessions on your website. check out www.clicktale.com.

Nov 7, 2009
by Ron Callari

Facebook & Twitter

Since social networks are all about being social, the visualizations on Twitter and Facebook are a unique opportunity to acknowledge your friends and followers to show your appreciation of them for being part and parcel of your social networks. It's also a means to communicate to others just how active you are in the social media space. Numbers are one thing, but what is it that we say about "one picture being worth a thousand words."

^{Ron Callari is a freelance journalist and editorial cartoonist. His slighlty off-center published work includes trends, social media, politics, travel, humor and political articles.}

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