crunchbase - ReadWriteWeb http://www.readwriteweb.com/feeds/tag/crunchbase en Copyright 2012 Richard MacManus readwriteweb@gmail.com Tue, 14 Feb 2012 18:04:00 -0800 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=4.35-en http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Check Out My New Favorite Browser Plug-In, Built by a Venture Capital Firm polarisextension.jpg

Tech investors Polaris Ventures built and released today a really handy new Chrome browser extension they call Polaris Insights. Click it and you'll be shown Crunchbase (tech financial), LinkedIn (employment) and Quora (general Q&A) information about the company behind whatever website you're visiting. It will be of particular interest to journalists, investors and others who take a deep interest in the websites of various businesses but it's a great example of bigger things, of course. Specifically, of the kind of value add that can be built by using distributed social media data to provide context to a given document. It's pretty hot.

]]> I wish that the extension showed Google News and Google Blogsearch results where available, but maybe that's the extension someone else will build. Tweets about the company with 5 or more retweets? The list of possibilities is long when you're talking about automatically collated, web-based, ambient information. I wish the extension queried Hoovers when no Crunchbase data is available. I wish I had a feature like this in an Augmented Reality brain implant I could invoke wherever I go offline. (Just kidding.)

Imagine a time when the only ways we could learn about a company was through its own advertisements or from centralized sources like Consumer Reports. The web is so different. A plug-in like this makes it as easy as snapping your fingers to see information about a company assembled by wiki (in the case of Crunchbase), by co-worker validation (LinkedIn) or by vote-driven Q&A (Quora). It's a wild world we live in.

For more enthusiasm about this software and for info about its creation, check out TechCrunch. That's where I found out about it.

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/check_out_my_new_favorite_browser_plug-in_built_by.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/check_out_my_new_favorite_browser_plug-in_built_by.php Product Reviews Wed, 26 Jan 2011 18:40:55 -0800 Marshall Kirkpatrick TradeVibes Company Information Wiki - 250 Alpha Invites TradeVibes, which has up until now been operating in stealth mode, is soon-to-be-public wiki focused around company information. TradeVibes combines an informational wiki with a number of community features aimed at using the wisdom of the crowds to create a company database similar to Hoovers. Though the company is still in closed alpha testing, ReadWriteWeb readers can access the site through this invite link.

]]> TradeVibes competes directly with TechCrunch's CrunchBase, which although it is not a wiki yet is planning to add full wiki functionality next month. Since it was founded by four early PayPal employees, is funded by Ron Conway, and based in Mountain View, California, TradeVibes naturally has an early focus on tech startups. Of the 594 companies currently listed in the database, 378 are in the "Consumer Internet" category, with another 78 in the "Business Internet" category (and "Communications and Networks" is the next most popular category). But unlike rival CrunchBase, TradeVibes has a broad focus and isn't limiting itself to tech companies.

In addition to the wiki, TradeVibes is trying to grow a community around its business information listings. Users are encouraged to discuss businesses in forums, rate whether they are "bearish" or "bullish" on specific companies, or submit news tied to companies listed in the database. News is voted on Digg-style and archived on the pages of companies it is associated with. Submitting news is sort of clumsy, as you have to pick the associated company from a drop down menu -- already a rather frustrating task with just 594 listings. But this is an alpha release, after all.

Each company listing has the expected fields: overview, industry and contact info, people, funding, products, competitors, and related companies. There is also sidebar content that is updated automatically including web metrics from Alexa, Yahoo!, and Technorati. I would love to see the site automatically pull content by keyword from Techmeme or include company blog feeds in these listings.

We have 250 invites available to ReadWriteWeb readers via a this invite link. Let us know what you think of TradeVibes in the comments.

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/tradevibes_wiki_invites.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/tradevibes_wiki_invites.php Product Reviews Fri, 15 Feb 2008 10:09:57 -0800 Josh Catone