Will Scully-Power: Managing Director, Datarati

Visual.ly, the most daring start-up in visualisation after the previous demise of Swiveland other “social visualisation” ventures.

Once their web servers can handle the load, the new and the already much hyped website allows access to over 2,000 different infographic illustrations, uploaded by designers like JESS3 and David McCandless, and including a large collection of own infographics.

Visual.ly has already attracted key partners in publishing, design and distribution, including The Atlantic, CNNMoney.com, eBay, GOOD Magazine, OMD, National Geographic, The Next Web, and Smirnoff. Each of these publications is allowed to upload its own graphics, which can then be embedded and shared via a Visual.ly-created embed code.

Visual.ly is also launching a so-called “Twitter Visualizer” application to exemplify the kind of automated tools it is creating to turn data into illustrative images. The visualization compares one’s Twitter activity and personality to that of others, including celebrities or Web gurus: “Twitter Visualizer is a great example of how Visual.ly can be creative with numbers. With 34 celebrities, five mouths, seven hair colors, 12 hair styles, two genders, 11 outfits, 2 positions, and 28 accessories, the program can put each Tweeter in 17,592,960 different scenarios.” (example image below)

The Twitter Visualizer is the first of a series of self-service tools that will allow any person to turn huge amounts of data into infographics “automatically”. This main infographic creation engine will be launched later this year, marking the end of Visual.ly’s beta period.

More: http://infosthetics.com/archives/2011/07/visually_launches_the_automatic_creation_of_infographics.html