Swivel is an online data upload, comparison and sharing platform. You can upload spreadsheets, or import them from Google, and then create visually appealing graphs. I came across Swivel in the last copy of Fast Company, which shows that the company already had 585,816 graphs uploaded at the the end of its first year of operations.
Swivel has a lot of potential for business uses (it was originally developed to graphically interpret Google AdWords campaigns) but also for information campaigns, such as civilian deaths versus military deaths in Iraq or the use of Creative Commons licensed photos on Flickr.
I can see all kinds of projects for students to delve into the world of data in a much more enjoyable way; kind of like YouTube for geeks. All you need is some publicly available data sets (lots on the web from government agencies and non-profits) and start comparing and creating. Finally, it seems that Swivel will remain free:
The rules will be simple:
- If you upload data for the public, Swivel is free.
- If you upload data and choose to keep it private and secure, there will be a fee.
It’s very easy to post a Swivel graph to your blog, like this one on world CO2 emissions:
