Metaweb

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the company Metaweb Technologies. For the defunct Quicksilver Wiki, previously known as The Metaweb, see Neal Stephenson.
Metaweb Technologies, Inc.
Type Private
Founded 2005
Founder Danny Hillis, Robert Cook
Headquarters San Francisco, California, USA
Key people Danny Hillis, Chairman
Thomas Layton, CEO[1]
Robert Cook, EVP, Product Development
John Giannandrea, CTO
Industry Data management
Products Freebase — an online database
Website www.metaweb.com

Metaweb Technologies, Inc. is a United States company based in San Francisco that is developing Freebase, described as an "open, shared database of the world's knowledge". The company was founded by Danny Hillis and Robert Cook as a spinoff of Applied Minds in July, 2005, and operated in stealth mode until 2007.

Contents

[edit] Freebase

On March 3, 2007 Metaweb publicly announced Freebase, described by the company as "an open shared database of the world's knowledge," and "a massive, collaboratively-edited database of cross-linked data." Until recently accessible by invitation only, this application is now open to the public in its alpha stage of development.

With Freebase, according to Danny Hillis, Metaweb is "trying to create the world's database, with all of the world's information." In the future, the company hopes to generate business revenue by organizing proprietary data. [2] Freebase has recently opened full anonymous read access to the public, requiring registration only for data contributions. Freebase contains data harvested from sources such as Wikipedia and MusicBrainz, as well as individually contributed data from its users. The structured data is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, [3] and a JSON based HTTP API is provided to programmers for developing applications on any platform to utilize the Freebase data (the source for the Metaweb application itself is not made available).

Freebase's ontologies — structured data categories, known in Freebase as "types" — are themselves user-editable.[3] Users can experiment with their own types, which can become broadly adopted if accepted by the administrator of the information category or domain it applies to.

Freebase runs on a database infrastructure created in-house by Metaweb that utilizes a graph model. [4] Queries to the database are made in "Metaweb Query Language" (MQL).

[edit] Funding

On March 14, 2006, Metaweb received $15 million in funding. Investors included: Benchmark Capital, Millennium Technology Ventures, and Omidyar Network.[5] Kevin Harvey of Benchmark Capital is a member of Metaweb's board of directors. On January 15, 2008, Metaweb announced a $42.5 million Series B round led by Goldman Sachs and Benchmark Capital.[6]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Metaweb announces hiring of Thomas Layton, CEO
  2. ^ "Start-Up Aims for Database to Automate Web Searching", The New York Times, 2007-03-09. Retrieved on 2007-03-09. 
  3. ^ a b "Freebase Will Prove Addictive", O'Reilly Radar, 2007-03-08. Retrieved on 2007-03-09. 
  4. ^ "Sharing what matters", The Economist, 2007-06-07. Retrieved on 2007-06-15. 
  5. ^ Benchmark Capital (2006-03-13). "Metaweb Technologies, Inc. Receives $15 Million of Financing From Benchmark Capital, Millennium Technology Ventures and Omidyar Network". Press release. Retrieved on 2007-03-09.
  6. ^ Metaweb Raises $42.5 Million led by Goldman Sachs and Benchmark Capital (company press release)

[edit] External links

Languages