One of the things that bothers me about Visual.ly is its casual conflation of "data visualizations" and "infographics". The two aren't the same thing, yet there's really not a clear distinction in how Visual.ly talks about them. e.g. http://blog.visual.ly/12-infographics-about-running-to-motiv... * edit: I just signed up and tried to create a data visualization. But it looks like the only thing you can create is to s…
You can create any infographic you want and link to (submit) it, you do not have to use the 'create an infographic' link.
I think that visual.ly is more about finding and sharing great infographics and data visualizations from around the web. Designers can upload their own work and showcase it to people who are into that kind of thing. Yes there are some bad infographics, like there are bad designs on dribble, but there are some great ones too.