Metaweb’s Freebase

calendar March 15th, 2007 by md

A very interesting thing developing in the intersection of data, web, and developer community: Metaweb announced the alpha of a product called Freebase – an open, free database of the world’s knowledge. It’s cool because it takes the open stance of a wiki, but in a structured way that allows contributors to put data in, connect it to other data and then to pull data out for publishing or application development. It’s different than Google Base or Wikipedia because of its focus on database like structure and on machine- and human-readability. Once Freebase is full of great data with a rich network of connections, larger scale applications and uses can be created on top of it.

I am a friend of the company and have done some work with them in the past year. It’s fun to finally be able to talk about it. Let me know if you have questions. The alpha is invitation only right now, but I’d be happy to try to get you one.

Here are some comments worth reading:

Esther Dyson

Tim O’Reilly

Markoff’s NYT article

tag Category : Stuff, Web/Tech, Worth knowing

8 Responses to “Metaweb’s Freebase”

  1. Shripriya, on March 15th, 2007 at 4:58 pm Said:

    Seems like a cool company, MD. Just last week I signed up to be on the mailing list and got a “we can’t take you on yet” email :) So an invitation would be great.

  2. md, on March 15th, 2007 at 6:40 pm Said:

    You got it! :)

  3. Jeremy Olson, on March 16th, 2007 at 9:48 am Said:

    I would definitely like to check this out because it may affect a project I’m working on right now. I may be able to use the Freebase API but I need to find out more. An invitation would be appreciated.

  4. md, on March 17th, 2007 at 9:33 am Said:

    Hi Jeremy, sure. Send your email address to info@reardenmetal.com. I will send you an invite.

  5. Jeremy Olson, on March 18th, 2007 at 10:17 am Said:

    Thank you very much md, I sent you my email address.

  6. md, on March 18th, 2007 at 3:23 pm Said:

    No problem. Enjoy the alpha. And let me know what you think.

  7. Jeremy Olson, on March 19th, 2007 at 7:14 am Said:

    So far I am very impressed with it. Right now I am thinking of ways I can use this for my web application (there are a lot of possibilities). As I continue to use Freebase, I’ll be blogging about it on my blog (click my name to go to that). I already have a few posts about it.

  8. md, on March 19th, 2007 at 8:09 am Said:

    Sounds good. I saw your posts and look forward to reading more of your thoughts.

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