Data Storytelling Heats up with Tableau Public’s New Web Platform; Now Serving 90,000-plus authors

2014 was a marquee year for Tableau Public, as more than 36,000 new authors joined and published more data stories than ever before. Tableau’s free platform for creating, sharing and discovering data stories on the web now boasts more than 90,000 authors publishing 4,500 visualizations a week. A visualization of the national exchange and interest rates in the Dominican newspaper El Nacional became the first Tableau Public “viz” to pass five million views.

Since its launch in 2010, authors have published more than 500,000 visualizations on Tableau Public – nearly half of which were published in 2014 alone. Tableau Public has become the go-to community for people everywhere to create and share their data visualizations with the world. Since its launch, people have published stories on topics ranging from contest election, to The World Cup and controversial policing policies to marine conservation.

Dr. Ramon Martinez, a specialist in health metrics at the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), tracked the spread of the Ebola virus in West Africa using Tableau Public. Dr. Martinez’s work has been featured in The Huffington Post and Mashable.

"For many years I dreamed of using data to advocate about population health issues, keep an open dialogue with public health professionals and communicate health key messages to the public,” said Ramon Martinez, “Tableau Public has served as the tool and a platform to create and share data visualizations, presenting facts in an engaging way and turning my dreams into a reality today."

New Web Platform to Improve Sharing and Discovery

Additionally, Tableau Public has launched a fully redesigned web platform to help people share and discover data stories. The site is currently available on open Beta at public.tableau.com.

The new web platform features:

• New profile pages: Dedicated pages for authors that enable them to edit and manage their portfolio of visualizations and showcase their work with others.
• New Viz Toolbar: Every visualization is automatically outfitted with a new toolbar that helps people interact and explore their own view of the story. People can edit, download, embed, navigate, or restore views.
• New Resources and Gallery: An expanded set of sample data sets to help people get started now includes quality scores of British universities, popularity of cats and dogs in the U.S., Tuberculosis burden in the world and many others. Additionally, the updated site features a revamped gallery, a curated set of the best visualizations of all time.

In addition, the site’s improved responsive design, rebuilt search, improved publishing experience and searchable maps make Tableau Public a state-of-the-art platform for data stories on the web.

“We launched Tableau Public with the vision of giving people a place to express a new form of storytelling. We believe data is a great conversation starter that can be both emotive and rational,” said Ben Jones, Director for Tableau Public. “We now have 90,000 of these world citizens who are helping us see and understand what’s happening around our world.”

Tableau Public consists of a free downloadable authoring tool to explore and visualize data, a cloud platform to host, share and embed interactive visualizations and a learning program that provides support and training to hundreds of thousands of data enthusiasts around the world.

Visit www.tableau.com/public to explore more data stories and download Tableau Public.

About Tableau
Tableau Software (NYSE: DATA) helps people see and understand data. Tableau helps anyone quickly analyze, visualize and share information. More than 26,000 customer accounts get rapid results with Tableau in the office and on-the-go. And tens of thousands of people use Tableau Public to share data in their blogs and websites. See how Tableau can help you by downloading the trial at www.tableau.com/trial.

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