Then, along comes ProPublica to give me renewed faith in the power of data visualization by connecting it with your life through Facebook. I recently left the service, but this is one of the best integrations that I’ve seen. Using the Facebook API, ProPublica pulls your high school and then automatically compares it to the other schools in your area. Suddenly, data has all the emotional punch of a high school football rivalry as you scan from Columbia River to Fort Vancouver to Hudson Bay. This is Big Data made personal, not through whizbang graphics but through demonstrated and automatic relevance.

Posted on July 6, 2011 at 4:14pm.

Then, along comes ProPublica to give me renewed faith in the power of data visualization by connecting it with your life through Facebook. I recently left the service, but this is one of the best integrations that I’ve seen. Using the Facebook API, ProPublica pulls your high school and then automatically compares it to the other schools in your area. Suddenly, data has all the emotional punch of a high school football rivalry as you scan from Columbia River to Fort Vancouver to Hudson Bay. This is Big Data made personal, not through whizbang graphics but through demonstrated and automatic relevance.

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Alexis Madrigal smartly argues for personalized data visualization as a way to use people’s “social graphs” to better understand the news.

I couldn’t agree more. The goal of news, at its most basic, has always been how to help people understand the world that they live in. While Google, Facebook and Twitter seem most interested in using people’s networks to sell them more crap, it’s great to see more high-minded uses.