One of the most interesting and intriguing offerings in the semantic space is freebase, a search platform from Metaweb Technologies. Billing itself as an open database built by a gigantic worldwide of community contributors. Together, members of this community are creating exactly the sort of structured information database that makes better search results available by meaning.
While at first blush, freebase may sound a little like Wikipedia, the crucial difference is in the way that freebase stores information. While Wikipedia is article-based, freebase is, like it says on the tin, a database – a relational database that makes a variety of linkages and conncetions possible through community contributions.
The community contribution aspect is what makes their database different from Google Base, which is organized NOT by the community but rather by Google. It is thus less of a collaboration and more of an expert model, by which I mean that Google essentially rests of the quality of its algoriothms while the efficacy of freebase is directly related to the “wisdom of the crowd.”
Users participate in the community first by browsing the topics available, and by filtering their results according to their specific wants. From there they can add and correct info, or create apps that make the information more useful to searchers.
Finally, users can suggest new schema for storing and organizing the info available. All this makes freebase more dynamic than Wikipedia or Google, though few would doubt the strengths of these offerings as well. Freebase is just a different way to search, use, add to, and deploy info.
Freebase is free to “consumers”, but developers may be charged if they create moneymaking APIs. Ads are also part of the model.
It’s interesting…using freebase takes a little getting used to, because it looks and feels different from Google or Yahoo. But you poke around a bit in it and I bet you will come to the same conclusion that I did – this thing, currently in alpha, could be pretty GD powerful if developer get aboard in a major way.
Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to write.
While at first blush, freebase may sound a little like Wikipedia, the crucial difference is in the way that freebase stores information. While Wikipedia is article-based, freebase is, like it says on the tin, a database – a relational database that makes a variety of linkages and conncetions possible through community contributions.
The community contribution aspect is what makes their database different from Google Base, which is organized NOT by the community but rather by Google. It is thus less of a collaboration and more of an expert model, by which I mean that Google essentially rests of the quality of its algoriothms while the efficacy of freebase is directly related to the “wisdom of the crowd.”
Users participate in the community first by browsing the topics available, and by filtering their results according to their specific wants. From there they can add and correct info, or create apps that make the information more useful to searchers.
Finally, users can suggest new schema for storing and organizing the info available. All this makes freebase more dynamic than Wikipedia or Google, though few would doubt the strengths of these offerings as well. Freebase is just a different way to search, use, add to, and deploy info.
Freebase is free to “consumers”, but developers may be charged if they create moneymaking APIs. Ads are also part of the model.
It’s interesting…using freebase takes a little getting used to, because it looks and feels different from Google or Yahoo. But you poke around a bit in it and I bet you will come to the same conclusion that I did – this thing, currently in alpha, could be pretty GD powerful if developer get aboard in a major way.
Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to write.
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