This document summarizes 16 different data visualization tools. Some of the tools highlighted include Fidg't for visualizing social networks, Flickrvision and Twittervision for seeing where photos and tweets are coming from geographically, and various tools for visualizing activity on sites like Digg. Other tools mentioned provide ways to visualize tags on Flickr over time, search the web visually through tag clouds and maps, and visualize real estate listings. The document provides brief descriptions and screenshots of each tool.

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16 Awesome Data Visualization Tools
May 15, 2007 - 1:18 am PDT - by Adam Ostrow 47 Comments
From navigating the Web in entirely new ways to seeing where in the world twitters are
coming from, data visualization tools are changing the way we view content. We found the
following 16 apps both visually stunning and delightfully useful.
Visualize Your Network with Fidg’t
Fidg’t is a desktop application that aims to let you visualize your network and its
predisposition for different types of things like music and photos. Currently, the service has
integrated with Flickr and last.fm, so for example, Fidg’t might show you if your network is
attracted or repelled by Coldplay, or if it has a predisposition to taking photos of their weekend
partying. As the service expands to support other networks (they suggest integrations with
Facebook, digg, del.icio.us, and several others are in the works), this one could become very
interesting.
See Where Flickr Photos are Coming From
Flickrvision combines Google Maps and Flickr to provide a real-time view of where in the
world Flickr photos are being uploaded from. You can then enlarge the photo or go directly to
the user’s Flickr page.
See Where Twitters are Coming From
From the maker of Flickrvision (David Troy) comes Twittervision, which, you guessed it,
shows where in the world the most recent Twitters are coming from. Troy has taken things one
step further with Twitter vision and has given each user a page where you can see all of their
location updates.
New Ways to Visualize Real-Time Activity on Digg
Digg Labs offers three different ways to visualize activity in real-time on the site, building on
the original Digg Spy feature.
BigSpy places stories at the top of the screen as they are dugg. Stories with more diggs show

2. up in a bigger font, and next to each one you can see the number of diggs in red:
Swarm visualizes stories with circles that grow and become brighter in color as they receive
more diggs:
Stack shows Digg users “stacking” up on top of stories, so as more diggs come in, the higher
the respective stack grows.
Visualize Words and their Synonyms
As the name implies, Visual Thesaurus allows you to navigate the dictionary visually. By
typing in a word, you can see its synonyms, and then navigate to one of them to see its’
synonymous and so on and so forth.
Visualize Flickr Tags Over Time
Taglines from Yahoo! Research allows you to visualize Flickr tags over time. For each day,
dating back to June 4, 2004, the eight most popular tags are shown with a photo selected for
each. You can view Taglines in waterfall mode, which displays eight tags and respective
photos in eight rows, or in river mode, where tags and their photos “flow” from right to left.
Search the Web Visually
Quintura allows you to enter in a search topic and then presents a split screen with a tag cloud
on one half and search results in the other. In this example, a search for “The Sopranos” brings
up a cloud with links like “hbo” and “television” on the left, with direct links to web sites on
the right.
KartOO is a visual search engine that employs several different visualization methods. In the
following search for “The Sopranos,” the left side reveals folders with additional related
topics, while the right presents a cloud of potential links to follow. Upon mousing over one of
these links, the left side is replaced with a Snap.com-style preview, while the right side shows
how the link relates to other topics.
walk2web lets you start by entering a URL, and then allows you visually browse web sites
that are linked from it. On the right, a large screen capture of the selected web site is shown to
give you a preview of site content.
Visualize Click Data with CrazyEgg
For webmasters looking for a visual output of where users click on their site, CrazyEgg’s heat

3. maps are an option. The recent upgrade of Google Analytics includes a Site Overlay with click
data, so it may be just a matter of time until it also adds a heat map feature.
Search Real Estate Visually
Trulia and Zillow allow you to search real estate listing with satellite imagery and maps. In the
following example from Trulia, you are allowed to switch between street maps and satellite
view. Once you have found a property in a desirable location, you can click on the push pin
icon to see a thumbnail image and details about the home. Using the search tools on the left,
you can refine your search to only show properties meeting certain criteria.
Visualize Digg Data like a Nuclear Submarine Commander
Two applications from Brian Shaler allow you to use a radar map to visualize Digg data. The
radar map is organized by placing users with the oldest Digg accounts in the center.
Digg RADAR shows you where on the map diggs are coming from:
The Map of Digg Friendship displays a user’s location on the map along with the number of

4. friends and fans they have:
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132 Responses to “16 Awesome Data Visualization Tools”
Pages: [1] 2 3 4 5 » Show All
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Ali Says:
May 15th, 2007 at 1:37 am
Some interesting applications there, never heard about walk2web before.

6. All these web startups happening, hard to keep up.
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Kris Hoet Says:
May 15th, 2007 at 3:05 am
Very cool list, there are a few I hadn’t heard of before that I need to check out.
Did you hear about Twingly already? Too bad it only works as a screensaver, but I think it
would fit in this list as well, pretty cool.
- Kris
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Chicago 2016 Says:
May 15th, 2007 at 3:24 am
I checked out that Digg tool the other day, but it looks like there are some other interesting
things I’ll need to check out. Thanks for the list!
4. 4
Basic Thinking Blog » Figdt Visualizer Says:
May 15th, 2007 at 4:43 am
[...] Mashable weitere Artikel: « Bloggen: was bringt mehr Traffic? || Trackback-URL
Artikelstatistik: [...]
5.
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nicky Says:
May 15th, 2007 at 5:34 am
During the french presidential elections, the “Observatoire présidentiel” had develop very nice
graphical tools that represent social networks.
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Adam Ostrow Says:
May 15th, 2007 at 5:39 am
Glad you enjoyed it … there are a lot of Digg visualization tools out there, perhaps enough to
warrant its own list sometime soon
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Adam Ostrow Says:
May 15th, 2007 at 5:40 am
Looks pretty interesting, although I can’t read French unfortunately. Thanks for sharing
8.
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Adam Ostrow Says:
May 15th, 2007 at 5:42 am

7. Had not seen Twingly yet. Just Googled it and it looks pretty neat. Thanks for sharing.
9. 9
E-democracy2.0 :: Pillole 2.0 :: May :: 2007 Says:
May 15th, 2007 at 5:44 am
[...] sentirete parlare sempre più spesso: le potenzialità sono abnormi! Intanto ecco un elenco
completo delle piattaforme di visualizzazione disponibili ad [...]
10.
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Jon Williams Says:
May 15th, 2007 at 10:53 am
Anyone know any good del.icio.us ones?
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Anonymous Says:
May 15th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
IMHO, Trulia’s heat maps are an awesome visualization tool.
Neighboroo builds on the idea and uses Trulia’s data services to map things like crime stats
and income to a microarray inspired coloring of cities and neighborhoods.
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Alex Says:
May 15th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
How about http://www.wefeelfine.org/ ?
Nominated for three 2007 Webby Awards in the following categories: Best
Navigation/Structure, Best Visual Design / Aesthetic, and Net Art.
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BayTaper Says:
May 15th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Does anyone know of a “generic” data visualization application? I need an app that I can feed
in data and their associations and then see the visualization of that data. It’s for a project of
mine, and I’d love to find something that could help me visualize this unique data set I have.
Suggestions?
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Adam Ostrow Says:
May 15th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
wow that one is really neat, will definitely include it when we revisit the topic
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Shawn Allen Says:
May 15th, 2007 at 2:25 pm

8. Off the top of my head I only know one: 6pli by Bestiario. Definitely keep an eye on these
guys.
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Beau Gunderson Says:
May 15th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
You can see a visualization of the number of Flickr photos by 1-degree squares of longitude
and latitude here:
http://www.beaugunderson.com/flickr/
17.17
Visual tools : Tu dosis de tecnología Says:
May 15th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
[...] Via mashable [...]
18.
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Blackout Says:
May 15th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
I love how on Visual Thesaurus the word Power leads to the word Powerless then Impotence.
19.19
Shane Cassidy’s Blog » Blog Archive » Visualization of Data Says:
May 15th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
[...] http://mashable.com/2007/05/15/16-awesome-data-visualization-tools/ [...]
20.
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Mauricio Pastrana Says:
May 15th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
here’s another oldie but still worthy of this list, its a 2d visualization of google news and
popularityy (and is pretty good as a “trend marker” of sorts):
“Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the
Google News news aggregator. A treemap visualization algorithm helps display the enormous
amount of information gathered by the aggregator.”
http://www.marumushi.com/apps/newsmap/
-mp
21.
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LordSalisburry Says:
May 15th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
Where does the data, that these applications are running on, come from?
22.22
mobmash blog » Blog Archive » links for 2007-05-16 Says:
May 15th, 2007 at 5:22 pm
[...] 16 Awesome Data Visualization Tools (tags: data visualisation mashups technology

9. web2.0) [...]
23.
23
John Says:
May 15th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
Another one you missed was:
http://tools.google.com/gapminder
24.24
Unatine :: blog : links for 2007-05-16 Says:
May 15th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
[...] 16 Awesome Data Visualization Tools (tags: visualisation tools) [...]
25.
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Eric Blue Says:
May 15th, 2007 at 6:31 pm
Great list!
26.
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Greg Sadetsky Says:
May 15th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Twittervision 3D!
27.
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Adam Ostrow Says:
May 15th, 2007 at 7:01 pm
mostly from APIs that the respective companies offer (Digg, Twitter, Flickr, Google Maps,
etc.)
28.28
16 Awesome Data Visualization Tools (With Pictures) « News Coctail Says:
May 15th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
[...] Data Visualization Tools (With Pictures) Filed under: Uncategorized — recar @ 2:02 am
16 Awesome Data Visualization Tools (With Pictures) From navigating the Web in entirely
new ways to seeing where twitters and diggs are coming from, [...]
29.29
[ Feeds 4 All ] :: 16 Awesome Data Visualization Tools :: May :: 2007 Says:
May 15th, 2007 at 7:18 pm
[...] Read More @ 16 Awesome Data Visualization Tools [...]
30.
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Brian Says:
May 15th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
Woo hoo! Made it onto the end of the list!

10. There’s also the heat-map version of that big green mess of lines:
http://brian.shaler.name/digg/heatmap/
Pages: [1] 2 3 4 5 » Show All
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