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<a href = "https://plot.ly/">Plotly</a> is an online graphing and analytics platform. It's a place where you can analyze data, make and share beautiful graphs, and discover content you love. It's also a community. In this post, we'll be highlighting a few of our favorite user graphs, and showing some of the key features available in Plotly. We'd love to hear your thoughts, suggestions and feedback. We're at <a href = "http://twitter.com/plotlygraphs">@plotlygraphs</a>.
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First up we'll show a histogram from <a href = "http://www.alexharrisonparker.com/">Alex Parker</a>. The graph shows the number of Google results for the word "space" with different numbers of a's. 55 and 96 are popular, with Google showing 2,970 results for space spelled with 96 a's.  If you hover your mouse over a point or click and drag to zoom in, you can learn more.
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<div class = "iframe_container">
<iframe src="https://plot.ly/~alexhp/61/650/550" width="650" height=550" frameBorder="0" seamless="seamless" scrolling="no"></iframe>
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The next graph was made by Wired Science writer <a href = "http://www.wired.com/author/rhettallain/">Rhett Allain</a>, and comes from his <a href = "http://www.wired.com/2014/05/video-analysis-of-an-exploding-death-star/">video analysis of an exploding death star</a> article. 
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Two fun things to point out here that you can do with Plotly. First, Plotly lets you easily make fits for your data, as Rhett often does. Check it out below, or head over to our <a href = "blog.plot.ly/post/84309369787/best-fit-lines-in-plotly">best fits gallery</a>.
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<center><iframe class="vine-embed" src="https://vine.co/v/Mvu3IKinnr0/embed/simple" width="600" height="600" frameborder="0"></iframe><script async src="//platform.vine.co/static/scripts/embed.js" charset="utf-8"></script></center>
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Second, you can embed your interactive plots in your blog post or website by putting your URL in this iframe snippet:
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<pre style="background:#f1f1f1;color:#000">&lt;iframe src=<span style="color:#c03030">"https://plot.ly/~etpinard/176/650/550"</span> width=<span style="color:#c03030">"650"</span> height=550<span style="color:#c03030">" frameBorder="</span>0<span style="color:#c03030">" seamless="</span>seamless<span style="color:#c03030">" scrolling="</span>no<span style="color:#c03030">">&lt;/iframe>
</span></pre>
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<div class = "iframe_container">
<iframe src="https://plot.ly/~RhettAllain/89/650/550" width="650" height="550" frameBorder="0" seamless="seamless" scrolling="no"></iframe>
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And here is how it looks when embedded.
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<center><img src="https://31.media.tumblr.com/af587be67d613b25019792582e1ee9a6/tumblr_inline_n5i7xoxtUk1srua81.png"></center>
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One reason you might enjoy Plotly: It's free, online, and doesn't need to be downloaded or installed. You can also access data you find in other plots by using a tool in WebPlotDigitizer. In this case, we used a tool called <a href = "http://blog.plot.ly/post/70293893434/automatically-grab-data-from-an-image-with">WebPlotDigitizer</a> to access the data in a Facebook Data Science post.
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<div class = "iframe_container">
<iframe src="https://plot.ly/~cimar/38/650/550" width="650" height="550" frameBorder="0" seamless="seamless" scrolling="no"></iframe>
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A fun thing about this is that when someone like Rhett embeds a graph, he gives me an opportunity to connect with him and his work. If I click the "data and graph" link in his posts, I can make my own copy of his graph and view his data. I can also see his profile <a href = "https://plot.ly/~RhettAllain/">https://plot.ly/~RhettAllain/</a>. He has all of his graphs there, much like you might keep all your photos on your Instagram profile. That lets you organize your projects and work all in one place where others can connect with you and see all your work and data.
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<center><img src="https://31.media.tumblr.com/ed1f19b3aa50a1ce6563f66de042c571/tumblr_inline_n5ia3k5D3R1srua81.png"></center>
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Sharing data and graphs together is a key part of Plotly. When I see a graph, I can also see the data to test it, share it, or re-graph it. You can also fork graphs and add to them, using either an API or by just copy and pasting or uploading data from a csv or Excel file. Here's how our grid looks:
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<center><img src="https://31.media.tumblr.com/a9f952e245894b55b3a4f727ace307f3/tumblr_inline_n5i8hd948g1srua81.png"></center>
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Plotly also lets you live-stream data into your browser. To see how this was made, check out this <a href = "http://www.instructables.com/id/Plotly-Atlas-Scientific-Graph-Real-Time-Dissolved-/">Raspberry Pi Instructable</a>.
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<div class = "iframe_container">
<iframe src="http://plot.ly/~streaming-demos/52/650/550" width="650" height="550" frameBorder="0" seamless="seamless" scrolling="no"></iframe>
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Plotly is also collaborative. Any graph you make you can keep private, or share with others. That means you can do all your data analysis, graphing, and collaboration in one place. No more emailing around files, graphs, screenshots, and presentations. You can do it all in Plotly.
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Sharing.
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<center><img src="https://31.media.tumblr.com/c79a679939dd48af0c2a609287ed02eb/tumblr_inline_n5i8qkDGMi1srua81.png"></center>
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Version control, so you can refer back to and restore previous versions of your work.
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<center><img src="https://31.media.tumblr.com/a1d7161b9932f88b36c3eb66434df80a/tumblr_inline_n5i8tpmJLt1srua81.png"><center>
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And discussion. The graph shown is <a href = "https://plot.ly/~etpinard/25/">here</a>.
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<center><img src="https://31.media.tumblr.com/437b67e01bf7ee48a2543637762f699e/tumblr_inline_n5i8x2LnYw1srua81.png"><center>
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The last one speaks for itself: the popularity of chocolates.
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<div class = "iframe_container">
<iframe src="https://plot.ly/~Dreamshot/324/650/950" width="650" height="950" frameBorder="0" seamless="seamless" scrolling="no"></iframe>