If there’s one thing the Web has taught us, it’s that there are many ways to tell a story. But few storytelling methods have inspired such intense backlash as the infographic. Not that there’s anything wrong with infographics, per se. It’s just that their emphasis on flashy visuals and easily-manipulated statistics make them susceptible to becoming empty, over-stylized exercises in misleading audiences.
So what’s the answer to what the Atlantic’s Megan McArdle called “the infographic plague”? More infographics!
Today, Visual.ly has taken its automated infographic tool out of beta, meaning now anybody with a computer and fingers is just a few clicks and keystrokes away from making his or her very own infographic.
Currently, the infographic templates provided by Visual.ly are based around Facebook and Twitter statistics, which isn’t suprirising considering these APIs (or Application Programming Interfaces) are fairly familiar and easy-to-use. But there’s no way to upload your own data sets, which gives little incentive for people who want to tell stories about, say, gas prices or corporate tax rates. Instead, users are limited to making infographics about what kind of “Facebook Monster” they are.
But despite the softball approach to do-it-yourself data visualization, Visual.ly CEO Stew Langille tells Techcrunch that he hopes the site can do for infographic production what WordPress did for online publishing. “We want to turn data into something that is really beautiful and usable.”
Langille added, “There’s a reason why we’re seeing so many infographics: it’s because it’s just a better way of telling a story,” as if to suggest that even a Pulitzer Prize-winning piece of writing couldn’t hold a candle to an average infographic.
Now, here at the Daily Dot, we’re all about shifting the means of production from traditional content gatekeepers to everyday users. But Visual.ly is going to have to heavily expand on this tool’s functionality if it wants to compete with existing free, user-friendly tools like Google Fusion Tables. And even then, while there will always be a place for beautiful, factual infographics, the days of merely “slapping an infographic on it” are already coming to a close.