Gil Elbaz wants people to make lots of spreadsheet tables filled with fun and important facts and share them across the Web. Later today, he will be launching Factual, which he describes as “a platform for anyone to share and mash open data.”
Elbaz previously was the co-founder of Applied Semantics, which Google bought in 2003 for $100 million and turned its technology into AdSense. With Factual, he is trying to collect a rich repository of structured data (i.e., data neatly placed in rows and columns in his database), all contributed by developers, publishers, and “data enthusiasts.” So if you love making spreadsheets, Factual is for you.
The way that Elbaz is going to get people to contribute to his online database is that all the data placed into it is open and free to use. He is also making it easy for people to create their own tables and embed them on their own sites. “We’ve built smart tools to help a community maintain a large, trusted source of structured data,” he explains.
See the examples embedded below of U.S. prisoners on death row and American Idol finalists to get an idea of what these tables look like. Every cell can be clicked on to add comments, see the source of that particular data point, and offer corrections. The tables can be filled with any kind of data, from a list of cancer doctors with their specialties and which insurance they accept, to a list of farmer’s markets across the U.S.
Elbaz believes that good data leads to good decisions. So he designed Factual to self-correct and improve its data over time. Once he has a rich source of structured data, that will start to become very appealing to developers, who can access Factual’s data through its API .
Of course, he is not the only one trying to o this. Danny Hillis at Freebase has a two-and-a-half year head start. Everything in Wolfram Alpha is highly structured in an automated way. And Google is trying to get into the game with Google Squared.
Check out the interactive Factual tables below.
This is a brilliant idea.
What about http://www.factolex.com?
+1
Also don’t forget Infochimps.org which just recently launched – they are on a similar path.
How is it different from Google Squared, even interface looks similar. Google Squared it self is a failure.
Great job guys! I can’t wait to use it…. especially the API.
There seems to be a rush of these applications coming out… Is this what the cool kids will be playing with next year? Will the semantic web actually get real one day?
Check out FluidDB (http://fluidinfo.com/fluiddb) for another take on this idea.
bob wyman
Hi Bob
Thanks for linking to FluidDB. There are some similarities between Factual and FluidDB, you’re right. But there are also some pretty strong differences. BTW, Gil and I talked at some length earlier in the year about what we were both up to. I may blog about some of the differences a bit later.
Gil – if you’re reading – congrats! Looks very nice.
Terry
Great idea! Gil’s been on a roll since his days at Oingo (Applied Semantics). Although the article says that he sold the company to Google for $100million, it looks like he received 1million shares of GOOG according to the filling back in ‘04. Congrats and continued success!
A guy named Tim Berners-Lee (yes, that one) has been promoting his similar initiative http://www.ted....e_next_web.html
What about Zoho Creator. This seems similar, with the twist being that all of the data is open.
Open data initiatives like Factual will accelerate collaboration and solutions to problems that we already have like spam, identity theft, etc.
Congrats to Gil and the Factual team. Great UI. Great video intro.
Keith
congrats to Gil, this looks interesting and I will dive in deeper over the weekend. some people we know in common have been talking Gil’s startup up for awhile – my new startup http://www.ranker.com leverages Freebase in similar capacity.
definitely a space to watch, though of course my opinion is completely biased.
Can’t wait to get some cool spaceflight into onto this new tool.
Congratulations to Gil and the Team!
Check out Datalette at http://www.datalette.com
We are a marketplace for structured data. We do this by establishing partnerships with market research experts and by building a repository of tables from free sources of data on the web.
sharing spreadhseets is no big deal…and this is far from “semantic”…