Written By Kate Zimmermann | March 9, 2007 | Share This |

Freebase is a new site that intends to organize the world’s information as a wikipedia-style folksonomy. As Techcrunch writes,

“The purpose of the database is to centralize as much data as possible, and allow participants to freely add and access data…[Freebase] also builds relationships between highly structured pieces of data, something that can’t easily be done with distributed data controlled by different entities.”

As others have pointed out, this is essentially a “bottom up” way of organizing content in a database - aka, a step towards the “semantic web” (HOLD IT - I see those eyes glazing over. Resist!). By letting the web’s organization emerge, rather than imposing codes a la W3C, Freebase will allow programs to discern relationships. The New York Times gives some examples,

“[Freebase] would make it possible for… Internet users to pose queries that might produce a simple, useful answer rather than a long list of documents.

“Freebase might be able to field a query about a child-friendly dentist within 10 miles of one’s home and yield a single result.

“The system will also make it possible to transform the way electronic devices communicate with one another…An Internet-enabled remote control could reconfigure itself automatically to be compatible with a new television set by tapping into data from Freebase. Or the video recorder of the future might stop blinking and program itself.”

Freebase seeks to find a middle ground between the algorithmic randomness of a search engine and the pre-defined structures of a database - aka “something that captures the relationships between things.” Something like artificial intelligence?

Freebase is the first product from Metaweb Technologies, a newly launched company led by technologist Danny Hillis. Tim O’Reilly has a great write up about Freebase, with screenshots of the invite-only alpha version.

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