The presentation of information is becoming ever more important in our lives. Over-exposure to too much data means that pertinent information is hard to pick out, making useful and actionable insights increasingly hard to derive.
Some have tackled this challenge head on in the past few years and have made significant successes from doing so. El Mundo, Spain’s second largest newspaper, has made a name for itself far beyond the country’s (or the Spanish-speaking world’s) borders thanks to its innovative use of infographics.
Infographics as a practice has become so popular that in recent years we’ve even seen it in music videos. However, they are becoming pretty commonplace and it takes something quite striking or immediately useful to stand out.
First National Bank Share Investing has taken a very proactive step in tackling this in its industry – definitely the first of its kind in the South African market. Share Swarm shows the performance of relevant shares in such a way that a layman can interpret it, but which can still be useful to a savvy investor.
Screen shot taken from the Share Swarm website
However, it provides more than just the typical narrative of your usual infographic. With live updates of daily activity plotted on a graph, coupled with a news feed running across the top, it’s simple enough to be usable, but also provides enough to make it worth using.
From the site itself: "The Share Swarm is an interactive graphic representation of shares and various other tradable entities available on the JSE. This is displayed using circle devices ("bubbles"), which are plotted on a graph, where the horizontal axis depicts SHARE PRICE (in ZAR) and the vertical axis depicts SHARE ACTIVITY. Therefore, the more trades made on a share, the higher it's bubble will sit on the grid. Similarly, the further right a bubble sits, the higher its share price."
I won’t delve too much into the details – I would rather urge for you to visit it and give it a spin yourself rather than try to probe into the intricacies of the information – but I would say that I think FNB are backing the right horse.
Given that the site also has links to various types of investment calculators and includes a page on trading jargon, it’s shaping itself up to become a one-stop shop.
To many potential investors, exploring the JSE or any other market can be a seemingly esoteric experience. There is so much going on at any given point that one struggles to derive any kind of sense from the noise. However, tools like Share Swarm allow people to get a grasp on what’s happening in the market, and as they become more comfortable with it, it has the tools to allow further customisation. That’s quite the advantage to have for FNB within the local SA market. Regardless of its execution and the uptake of this particular tool by the public, the fact that the company is looking to make improvements in this arena is a good sign for its future.
Also check out:
