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The team behind Big Blue's wide-open data-sharing site wants it to evolve into a kind of social-networking outlet.

By Candace Lombardi, CNET News.com, March 29, 2007

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Many Eyes, the data-sharing site from the Visual Communication Lab at IBM, is getting more social.

The Many Eyes Web site, in public alpha since January, enables people to upload data sets from common delineated files, such as an Excel file, then go through a few clicks to make it visual and available to all.

There are 15 different types of data charts, called visualizations, that can further be manipulated by viewers to search and parse for different views and more specific data subsets. Users can upload their own data set, and also choose others' data sets to visualize.

The idea behind the site is that people who have a common interest in certain types of data can come together on the Internet as they do with music, movies and video. The group hopes that it will be a place for researchers to make contact, too.

"We think people will use it to build communities around data," said Matt McKeon, a developer for Many Eyes.

Toward that end, the IBM research team is adding more features for social-networking and Web 2.0 ease of use.

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