Every day millions of people are tweeting, digging, voting up on reddit, IMing, texting, and uploading video content.  Keeping track of everything on the Internet can be overwhelming.  Visualizing some of this data can make things easier on our eyes.  There are lots of tools out there that can help visualize and make sense of all of the user generated data.  The purpose of this blog post is to raise the awareness of the tools available as of today.  I have broken down the tools by the associated websites in alphabetical order here.

Digg

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Digg 365 (Sponsored by McDonald’s) [Link] – Digg launched this service on the company’s 5 year anniversary of their launch. Digg 365 shows the top 10 stories on the day, month, or year.  Users have the option to filter out top tens based on the categories.

Digg Arc [Link] – Digg Arc shows the active stories, topics, and containers from Digg.com as a sphere.  As people digg stories across each topic, the arc grows bigger.  This visualization tool can be downloaded as a screensaver too.

Digg Bigspy [Link] – Digg BigSpy shows stories at the top of the page as they are dugg.  When new stories are dugg, they are placed at the top of the list.  The more diggs a story has, the bigger the text.

Digg Pics [Link] – Digg Pics is a website that tracks images that are being dugg.  As the pictures on Digg.com get dugg, the image thumbnails slide over from the left.

Digg Stack [Link] – Digg Stack shows about 100 stories in real-time that are being dugg.  As a story gets dugg, a stack piece falls from above. Stories that are bright have more diggs than others.

Digg Swarm [Link] – Digg Swarm shows a circle whenever a story is dugg.  Active stories are depicted as a circle and diggers swarm around it, causing the circle to grow. The brighter circles are the most popular.

Facebook

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Facebook Friend Wheel [Link] – Facebook Friend Wheel is a Facebook application that takes your friend list and shows them on the parameter of the circle.  When you put the mouse over a name on the outer part of the circle, it shows how your friends are interconnected.

TouchGraph [Link] – TouchGraph is a Java based Facebook application that shows you the connections between your Facebook friends, locations, and photos.

Flickr

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Creative Photos [Link] – Creative Photos allows you to select a date and pull up 10-100 random photos uploaded on Flickr that day.

Flickr Map [Link] - Flickr Map is the official Flickr website that shows over 95 million geotagged Flickr images on a world map.

Flickr Time [Link] – Flickr Time shows uploaded pictures from Flickr in a collage that forms the current time.

Flickrvision [Link] – Flickrvision is an unofficial website that shows images uploaded and geotagged on a map.

GimmeShiny.com [Link] - Gimme Shiny is a slideshow website that shows the most popular images on Flickr, FFFFound, and DeviantArt every day.

qFlick [Link] – qFlick shows the most interesting photos on Flickr for today.

Google Maps

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Alkemis Local [Link] – Alkemis uses Google Maps to zoom into live traffic cams and also aggregates content from Flickr, Delicious, A9 Blockview, and Yahoo! Traffic News.

tetonGeo.com [Link] – tetonGeo.com is a way to locate Flickr images, tweets, YouTube videos, and Foursquare through Google Maps.  All you have to do is select a point of interest and select the social media data tool from the bubble.

Last.fm

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Extra Stats [Link] – [Note: Windows only] – Extra Stats is a program that puts together tag clouds and charts using stats of your Last.fm listening history.

Fidg’t [Link] – Fidg’t is a desktop software application that shows you the activities of your Last.fm network.  Using Fidg’t, you can find out the type of music that your network is listening to. Fidg’t also connects to Flickr to show you pictures that are related to the Last.fm tags.  Fidg’t also works with MSN Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, and Yahoo! Messenger.

Gijsco’s Desktop Generator [Link] – Gijsco’s Last.fm Desktop Generator is software that downloads your Last.fm personal data and presents the cover art as a beautiful wallpaper.

ImageWorth [Link] – ImageWorth does a Flickr search for images that have tags related to the music you are listening to on Last.fm.

Last.forward [Link] – Last.forward is an open source mapping software that shows a visualization of any Last.fm user and connections.

Music Quilt Screensaver [Link] - This screensaver displays the cover art of artists and albums that you like.  After installing the software, enter a username or tag and it will display the cover art.

Reddit

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Erqqvg [Link] - Erqqvg shows what is happening in real-time to stories on the homepage and on subreddits categories.  This includes up-votes, down-votes, comments, etc.

RedditPics [Link] – Redditpics shows commenting and voting in real-time for pictures submitted to Reddit.

Twitter

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TweetStats [Link] – TweetStats shows you the timeline, density, daily tweet chart, aggregate hourly tweets, reply stats and interface used chart.

Twitt3D [Link] – Twitt3D shows the tweets that would normally appear on your homepage in a 3D aerial view.

Twitter Browser [Link] – Twitter Browser is a diagram website that shows how people are interconnected on Twitter.

TwittEarth [Link] – TwittEarth is a way to visualize tweets on a 3D globe.

TwitterFountain [Link] – TwitterFountain shows you tweets related to specific keywords in a fountain format.  The background picture is grabbed from Flickr based on the same keyword and changes frequently.

Twitter Vision [Link] – Twitter Vision is a map that displays in real-time where tweets are being sent from.

YouTube

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YouTube Streams [Link] – YouTube Streams is an official project that allows you to chat with people watching the same videos as you.  Users can create streams for specific categories.  In this case, I decided to join the Michael Jackson Sexy Fans channel and see what people were talking about.