Let's Get Visual!

I have to give a Standing Virtual O to the creative folks at Pepsi who developed a visualizer for all the Twitter conversations going on around this year's South by South West (SXSW) Conference.

If you haven't seen it you really should check it out


This conversation virtualizer as well as other similar efforts really underscore how hard it is to keep up with all the discussion that occurs online today--status updates, tweets, feeds, comments etc.

Sometimes our best intent to stay informed and engaged can be fruitless because of the overwhelming amount of real-time updates (particularly when you are looking at 344 new tweets just received in the last 10 mins). So topic trending applications, tag clouds, visualizers etc. can put a visual face on conversations making it easier for users to engage on their own time at their computer or on their mobile phone.

Some popular and obscure but fun apps to let you do this are:

• twistori
• twitter venn
• cloud.li
• webbr (more of a visual social network than just a conversation)
• twitscoop
• twittearth
• facebook friend visualizer
  
• twitter trend (iPhone app)