People Search Digest

Imagine a huge database that collected information from all over the web and aggregated it all in one place. You really don’t have to imagine anything; just go to Freebase.com and see for yourself. Freebase, which was created by the good people at Metaweb Technologies, is an open database built by and for the community at large. It is free for anyone to search, contribute, to build applications on top of, or integrate into their own websites.

Currently, Freebase includes millions of topics in hundreds of different categories that are taken from large open data sets like Wikipedia, MusicBrainz, and SEC archives. It provides structured information on popular topics like music, people, movies, and places, which are all resigned and available via an open API. It is constantly being updated and altered by the user community. The ultimate goal of Freebase is to eventually allow people and machines easier and faster access to information than they can today.

Most recently, Freebase has taken $42 million in funding from Benchmark Capital and Goldman Sachs, which brings them up to $57 million in total funding to date. This is great news for the data site which has great potential to revolutionize information collection, as well as information search.