We can all agree that the volume of information on the web is growing at an astonishing rate. What we can’t seem to agree on is the actual growth rate. I have found people claiming that information on the web is growing by 10% a year. Other sources say 30% a year. I remember reading something about this in the book The Digital Economy – they said that information is doubling every 200 days or so.

In order to have a good reliable number, we have to have good reliable, universal and open metrics.

Until then, designers and technologists are addressing the issue of presenting large volumes of complex information in ways that are easy to understand and useful to ingest.

Edward Tufte has been beating this drum for some time now. His work is a chronicle of designs by designers who have been dealing with this very same issue for centuries. One of the most famous pieces is Napoleon’s March, by Charles Joseph Minard portraying the losses suffered by Napoleon's army in the Russian campaign of 1812. So much data and so elegant. This is a must see.

With the advent of AJAX, Google continues to simplify designs while revealing more and more information as the user interaction context requires it. One of the best examples of this is Google’s finance.

Yahoo has been able to continue its commitment to content - not just search - by using some of the same AJAX techniques popping up all around the web. They have been able to collapse six complex functions into a span of about 250px by 100px. Through heavy use of mini-tabs, they have also been able to cram in about ten times more information on the page without impacting the overall texture of the page – preventing users from experiencing content overload.

Digg has also been experimenting with their data visualization techniques. Digg is an online social networking/content aggregator site where people get to share and comment on links. The links that get “Dugg” enjoy more popularity and higher visibility. A huge level of data flows through this site, and Digg has developed two tools to help users visualize that data. They are both quite amazing and useful.

Finally, I found this link that contains many other examples of data visualization. The examples found on this site are ridiculously cool – you must take a peek.

So, keep an eye on this – as data continues to grow, we will be seeing more and more of this type of stuff.