Freebase and Creative Commons

I just got back from SXSW, and there was a really positive response to Freebase from the people I met.

I think that our decision to make Freebase data available via the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-by) license is a big part of the positive reaction -- people are willing to share when they know that the sharing goes both ways.

Freebase invite contest

Now I'm looking for people who have data to share and would like to try out Freebase. So I'm holding a contest - if you want to use Freebase, post a comment and tell me why you are interested. The three best submissions between now and Friday, March 23 will get invites to our alpha test.

Whether you're a regular user, a programmer who wants to use an API, or have an interesting data set that you'd like to share with the world, you've got a chance.

Happy Birthday Freebase.com

Happy Birthday, Freebase.com
Originally uploaded by ptufts.

John Markoff just wrote an article for the New York Times about my company, Metaweb, and our Freebase project: "Startup aims for web database to automate searching", and Tim O'Reilly talks about what it all means on O'Reilly Radar (with the bonus of a few screenshots of the site).

Jon Phillips of Creative Commons has good things to say about our use of the CC Attribution license for the shared data - this is a database we want people to use.

I'm at SXSW Interactive Mar 9 - 14 looking for people who would like to work for us in San Francisco (we're hiring) or develop their own applications that use Freebase. I'm also looking for communities and people with data to share - if you have a catalog of data in any domain and want to share it with the world, let me know.