Social Network Overload

How often have you checked your social media accounts today? Feeling unplugged is a problem for many people.  Social Network Overload from mylife.com talks about how people are addicted to social media, and what they rather do than give up their Internet lifeline. 

Afraid you’re missing something important on your email, Facebook, Twitter, or other accounts? You are not alone. Two out of three people feel the same way. In the same survey, three out of five people wished there was a solution to monitor their various communication options.

Here’s an interesting infographic based on a survey by Harris which illustrates a growing trend—social media overload

The isometric illustrations of people and the data visualizations are fun, and the light-hearted data makes this one appealing to share.  The design is missing the URL to the infographic landing page, so that readers can find the original when they see thie infographic posted on other sites.

Found on The Undercover Recruiter and Visual Loop.

Top 250 Internet Retailers Q3 2012 Update

Top 250 Internet Retailers Q3 2012 Update infographic from the Campalyst blog

Back in May we published an infographic about Top 250 Internet Retailers’ presence on social media. The infographic was perceived really well by our readers, customers and the media; thanks a lot to all the people sharing it on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and their blogs!

Now we are happy to present you with the Q3 update! Spoiler: those were two incredible quarters for Pinterest! Amazing growth in terms of the number of brands building their presence on Pinterest and the size of their communities!

I like the color scheme and the variety of data visualizations used in this infographic.  Bars, icons, arcs and proportional circles.  The use of the Internet retailer logos in the circles is especially effective.

I wish the Social Media site logos had been used, especially in the first three sections.  I shouldn’t have to read the text and match the color to figure out what the visualization represents.  That’s too much work for the reader.  How many people does each of the people icons represent in the “How Many Followers Do They Have?” section?  The lines look “relatively right”, but the number of icons seems to have no relationship to the actual numbers shown.

The footer needs both a copyright statement (or Creative Commons license) and the infographic landing page URL so readers can find the original when they see this posted on other sites (like this one!).  Many bloggers are not good about linking back to your original site correctly, and you want your audience to be able to find it easily.

Found on Fresh Peel and Visual Loop

The Ultimate Complete Final Social Media Sizing Cheat Sheet

The Ultimate Complete Final Social Media Sizing Cheat Sheet by LunaMetrics is a huge (and very long) informational infographic that shows the readers all of the important image sizing requirements for the major social networks.

In June of this year, we published an infographic listing all of the sizing information for images on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest. It was a wildly successful piece of content, totally blowing our expectations out of the water. Unfortunately, while its popularity has flourished, nearly every social network instituted changes to their image sizes, rendering most of the information on the infographic out of date.

We knew we needed to update the information on the cheat sheet, but we weren’t comfortable with simply adjusting one or two figures on the blog post and leaving it as-is. We’d also received a lot of feedback, both on the design and information it contained. We decided to redesign the entire sheet and incorporate a few more social networks.

We also decided to permanently redirect the old sheet here, so that shared tweets, pins, likes, and so on, would lead to the correct sizing dimensions. Additionally, as sizing changes are implemented across social networks, we’ll actively update this sheet – meaning that if you use the embed code at the bottom to share this sheet on your own site, the image will automatically update with changes as they are rolled out. No more out-of-date information.

I love that all of the sizes are shown in correctly proportional rectangles!  Based on their claim, this infographic should also update correctly as they revise it to match the ongiong changes from all of the social networks.  

Some color of the official logos of the different social media networks at each section break would have been helpful to the reader.  The light typeface used at each section break is hard to distinguish from the rest of the design.

Found on Social Media and Social Good

Facebook’s Network of Worldwide Affiliates

From BusinessProfiles.com, this Facebook infographic takes a look at the complex virtual network of affiliates behind Facebook.

Earlier this week, Facebook’s proposed revisions to its legal agreements with users went into effect following a vote by the social network’s users. One of the changes means that Facebook can now share your data with its affiliates. But who exactly are Facebook’s affiliates? Most of the media coverage has focused on Instagram. But Business Profiles research can now reveal that Facebook has at least 67 Facebook affiliate companies worldwide. The results are summarized in today’s infographic.

I like this design, and it has some great information about what Facebook’s legal agreements really mean to members.  It’s a focused story that isn’t trying to tell the reader too much information.  The color scheme is so close to the official Facebook brand colors and design that it could easily be misunderstood as an official publication, which it isn’t.

The lack of clear title makes this infographic design hard to share.  Anyone that posts a link has to make up a related title, which will be very inconsistent.  The lack of clear title, also makes it more challenging for a reader to know why they should take the time to read the infographic.  The risk is being considered “just another infographic about Facebook” and ignored by readers.

The map data is clear and easy to read.  The affiliate connects are the most interesting part of this design.  When the privacy policy says they can share you personal information with Facebook Affiliates, this is who they actually mean.

We sourced this information from our own extensive corporate registration directory as well as from other public and subscription sources. Please note that not every jurisdiction makes comprehensive business registration readily available. As a result, there are likely even more Facebook affiliates than those listed above. However, we hope that this gives some sense of the extensive and rapidly expanding physical footprint of the social network.

Information sources were obviously a challenge, and the statement above is included under the design on the infographic landing page.  However, there is no Sources statement in the footer of the design itself, so when the infographic is shared on other sites there is no mention of where the data came from.  Infographic designs really need to have the data sources listing in the image file so they go with the infographic when shared online.

Found on Infographic Journal

What Makes a Travel Writer?

For those who would love to travel and write, the What Makes a Travel Writer? infographic from hotelclub.com is the infographic for you. This infographic covers the ages and careers of these writers, and also what technology they use.

If you’ve ever wanted to become a travel writer, you’ve probably wondered about the tools and resources the pros use to make their jobs possible. The trade secrets of those who successfully turn international adventures into paychecks are an enticing mystery. Does the key lie in social networking? Is it finding the right technology that makes all the difference? Or have these professionals stumbled onto some obscure websites that the rest of us are ignorant about?

Unfortunately, there isn’t one explicit answer that will transform you into a travel writer overnight. It is a combination of all of these things that enable the professionals to do their jobs well enough to afford a warm meal and their next plane ticket.

So to gain some insight into the tricks of the trade, and hopefully get you one step closer to your dream job, we surveyed some of the best travel writers on the web about their working habits. We got the scoop on Twitter from three of the most ‘Followed’ travel tweeters in the business (@Paul_Steele, @TravelEditor, and @DaveDTC); found out that Paris and NYC are two of the best places in the world to find (marketable) inspiration; and were warned against going any where near Birmingham or Malaga.

Find out what else we learned in our detailed infographic.

I really like this design.  I like that the infographic keeps the same, simple color scheme throughout to match the colors in the header. However, it lacks a border or a background color to help frame the infographic on a webpage with a white background.  The white background creates uncertainty of where it actually ends.

Most of the information is in percentages; however, it is all conveyed in different visual formats.  The stacked bars, pie charts and doughnut graphs correctly show them in comparison to the complete 100%.  The partially shaded shaped of film canisters, people icons and the world map aren’t quite correct.  The readers see the area colored of an object, and because of the odd shapes the designer had to guess the correct shading by just changing the height.  It’s close, but not actually correct.

A few other suggestions I would make:

• The two age groups compared with the man & woman icons aren’t related to each other, so the comparison isn’t helpful information.
• For the Male-Female comparison comparison in Travel Career, the icons need to be the same width for them the be accurate.  Visually it looks like 75% is at least double 53%, which obviously isn’t true.
• The Tablet Brands statistics of “100% of male travelers use Amazon Kindle” isn’t support by the data to the left, and is a highly unbelievable stat.  
• When lining up rows of icons, like in Blogging Platforms, the design should always use rows of 10 icons.
• I’m sure the last circle in the Twitter Usage section was supposed to be <100 Twitter followers instead of >100.
• There should be a URL at the end of the infographic linking to the original full-size version.

Thanks to Ally for sending in the link!

Is Google+ a Ghost Town?

Google+, The newest trend? Or the newest flop? Umpf gets to the bottom of this mystery with a little research and reports it’s results with an infographic! The Google+, Ghost Town? infographic does more than just report the Google+ statistics, it compares them to other key social networks.

There’s been many articles written about how good, bad and indifferent Google+ is.  But our favourite debate is the ongoing It’s Really Popular Vs It’s A Ghost Town one.

So what’s the truth?  Our findings and infographic (see below) appear to suggest the latter: despite its large number of accounts, G+ is bottom of the list of social network users’ favoured channels.

Google, of course, claims it is fast-growing and really popular.  Why wouldn’t they? And, of course, there is research to support that argument. But does this chart, left, for example, which shows the rise in G+ unique visitors, tell the whole truth?

So, we decided to do our own research.  It is by no means exhaustive and is only meant as a snapshot view, so judge for yourself.

Certainly a trending topic lately, but also a really good infographic design.  Of course it’s framed in a Google+ news feed style layout.  Easy to read and colorful.  I like the color coding related to the different social network logos, even though some of those blue colors are hard to differentiate.

In the Users bar chart, I love the use of color, putting the data right in the bars and using the logos on the axis to eliminate any need for a legend.  Good data visualizations design!

In the “Users Likely to Share” I would have liked to see some sizing of the icons to match the data. Instead, they put the icon illustrations into rank order, continued the consistent color coding and clearly identified 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.

The section with all of the doughnut charts (reminiscent of the Google+ Circles icon) also continues the consistent color coding.  I’m sure it a rounding issue, but many of the charts only add up to 99.9% instead of 100%.

At the bottom, the two things missing are some type of copyright license as well as the URL linking back to the original infographic landing page.

Thanks to Jon for sending in the link!

ROI = Return On Infographics

Infographics about infographics are always fun.  Return on Infographics by Bit Rebels and NowSourcing takes a look at some of Bit Rebels’ own data from releasing infographics as part of their marketing.

The impact of an infographic can be measured on many levels, which makes it all just a little bit more complex and complicated to present. With the help of NowSourcing, we have been able to produce an infographic that will compare the traffic and social action impact of an infographic post with a traditional post that does not involve an infographic. It’s through social media analytics that a clear image slowly emerges to tell a story that for some has just been a question without an answer.

They’re pretty clear about this, but remember that this design is completely based on internal data from Bit Rebels.  It may be a good indicator of infographics in general, but we don’t know for sure.

Bit Rebels has shared some fantastic data from their internal tracking, which will be of interest to the you, the readers of Cool Infographics.  However, the design makes a few mistakes, and we’re all here to learn how to make infographics designs better.

• One of my pet peeves, the design messed up the size of the circles in the comparison table.  Based on the full-size infographic they released at 975 pixels wide, the smaller circle for 243 Actions is about 55 pixels in diameter.  Doing the match for the area of a circle, the diameter of the larger circle for 1,091 Actions should be about 117 pixels wide.  In the design, it’s actually about 256 pixels wide!  So instead of visually showing a shape roughly 4x larger, it’s actually showing a circle about 22x larger!  This is a “false visualization” and mis-represents the data.
• Are these comparison data points an average or a total of the 500 posts?
• How many infographic posts are compared to how many traditional posts?
• Love the use of the actual logos from the social networks in the comparison table, and they should have continued that with the rest of the design instead of just text later in the design.
• The blue bars behind the higher comparison value look like bar charts, but obviously don’t match the data.  They just fit the text, and have no visual relevance to the data.  An indicator icon or highlighting the entire column width would have been better than the bars.
• Are the Top 6 Social Networks in rank order?  LinkedIN is the top social network for infographics???
• The circles near the end of the design are also incorrect.  Instead of showing a 10x comparison to match the dollar values, the circles show an over 100x comparison!

Found on WebProNews, MediaBitro’s AllTwitter, and Visual.ly.  Thanks to everyone that also submitted it and tweeted links to it!

Best Times to Tweet or Post on Facebook

You put a lot of thought, energy and sometime money into your long-format post or infographic, and you want to get the most traffic out of it you can, right?  Not only is it good SEO practice, but it feels good when someone “likes” your post on Facebook. So why not give yourself the best chance at receiving them? The Best Times to Tweet or Post on Facebook infographic from Raka has the inside scoop!

There are few resources better than URL shortener bitly for monitoring click-through rates for content shared on Facebook and Twitter. So when bitly released a report last month telling us all the best time to tweet or post to Facebook for click-throughs, we listened. And then we created an infographic.

This handy infographic highlights bitly’s data on the best times to share content on Twitter or Facebook if you’re looking to drive traffic to your site (or any site). Bitly found the best times to tweet for click-throughs are early afternoon Monday – Thursday, while Facebook content posted Wednesday at 3 p.m. generates the highest click-through rates, according to bitly’s data.

But why read words when you can look at pictures? Here’s the best-time-to-tweet-or-post-to-Facebook infographic created by digital agency Raka with data provided by bitly:

I really love designs like this.  The data visualization is big and center, and doesn’t need a lot of text to explain the key findings.  I would have reversed the color gradient so the the low times are mostly white and the highest times are dark red, but that’s just me.

At the bottom should be some type of copyright or Creative Commons statement, and the URL to the original infographic should also be included in the infographic design itself.

Hmmm…  Maybe I should have timed this post better…

Thanks to Brian for sending in the link!

It's All About The Images

Here’s some irony for you. It’s All About The Images infographic from MDG Advertising relays information visually about the importance of relaying information visually.  Yes, it’s very meta.

Some say image is everything, and that’s especially true on the Internet where the shift to visual optimization is playing an increasingly important role in the recent phenomenon of photo marketing. In light of their numerous benefits for brands of all kinds, MDG Advertising developed an insightful infographic that illustrates the influence of images on a company’s business, branding, search, and social media efforts. For insight on optimizing images for content and commerce, along with advice on image optimization techniques, take a look at the following infographic to see why images can help make success a snap.

In our world, this information is true for posting infographics as well as photo images.

Thanks for sending in the link!

What About Me? - Intel's Infographic Generator

Intel has released What About Me?, an automatic infographic generator that connects to your own Twitter, Facebook and YouTube accounts to create a profile infographic about you.

Social media users know that discovery is half the fun. With What about Me? you can capture a snapshot of your social media life and create your own colorful image, full of clues and facts about one of the most fascinating subjects in the world — YOU!

In general, I’m not a fan of automatically generated infographics.  I find them repetitive, like PowerPoint templates, and that makes everyone’s information look the same.  This one at least incorporates a few photos of your own to give a little personal touch, but not much.

From a design perspective, the “About Me” section is the big central visual element.  I like the color spectrum and the simple icons used for the dominant categories.  It may be just my own data, but all of the percentages are small and fairly close to each other, so visually you don’t see much difference at all.  Am I really that well balanced???

In the “How I put it out there” section, the bars are all portions of the total 100%, so a pie chart or a stacked bar would have been a better chart style to use in the design.  Again, in the “When I clock in” section, these two values are portions of the total 100%, so some type of visualization that shows that would have been helpful to the reader.

I really like the simplicity of the “My Mood” section, and I think they actually made it too small in this design.  As a completely visual element it could reall be much larger and more prominent.  I would really like to have some type of editing capability, like choosing which images are included.

I think they setup the sharing function poorly.  You can save a JPG file of your own design (like mine above) to your own computer.  If you share on Facebook or Twitter it will post the infographic as a photo in your account, but the link it generates will just take someone else back to the front page to design their own.  That’s confusing because the link should be sharing your own design with others, so they would have the option to like or share your design.

If you create your own design, share post the link to your image in the comments!

Found on Mashable