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Are infographics hurting the Internet?

Steve and Allen from lesseverthing.com posted a humorous infographic about how infographics are “ruining the Internet”.  Obviously there is a lot of sarcasm and humor in their post but they have a point they were trying to make which is that publishers are getting lazy and are preferring infographics to text posts.

The reason: “Infographs are usually very pretty, but it’s really a gimmick, they’re not useful content, it’s link bait to get traffic to a blog.”  I would have to say on a very low level I agree with that point.  I agree because if publishers use infographics alone with no other supporting data, research or text then the visual effect alone is not enough to publish quality content.

Overall though, I disagree with their point.  Infographics are not meant to be an entire post but are meant to be supporting data in a visual manner to back up the article a publisher is writing.  Just like the old saying goes, “some people are visual learners.”  Accompanying a good article with a visual graph is actually a much better presentation. Case in point. Infographics are a powerful tool and I fully support the use of them.

I also think that creating infographics is not an easy task.  Unless as they did, pay $150 to have it made.  The cost to have it made probably doesn’t balance out the amount of traffic the infographic would drive to the blog.  I have made a couple of infographics and again they are not easy and for me took at least 2-3 hours just in Photoshop getting it right to make.  You also have to compile the data for the infographics before even starting on it.  Plus I have some basic knowledge of Photoshop and experience with it.

Are infographics ruining the Internet?  Not at all.  Just as with anything, it has to be used correctly and not abused as some lazy publishers might be doing.