Freebase
Freebase is an open, graph-shaped database of facts about the real world. Freebase aims to organize human knowledge similar to databases like Wikipedia. It allows users to contribute facts and data that can be interlinked through its graph-shaped model.
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Freebase: Open Graph-Shaped Database of Facts
A knowledge sharing platform allowing users to contribute and link facts, organized in a graph-like structure similar to Wikipedia.
What is Freebase?
Freebase is an online graph database of structured data about real-world entities, events, and relationships. It was created by Metaweb and acquired by Google in 2010, before being shut down in 2016.
Some key aspects of Freebase include:
- It contained data on over 40 million topics, making it one of the largest online knowledge bases.
- The data was structured using an entity-relationship model allowing complex queries to extract specific information.
- It had typed links between different entities enabling data to be connected in meaningful ways.
- The database was editable by the public similarly to a wiki allowing anyone to contribute data.
- The site and API gave users free access to query and reuse the data in their own applications.
- Data formats included RDF allowing for integration with linked open data projects.
By organizing a vast trove of real-world knowledge and making it openly available, Freebase empowered new discovery and innovation using data and artificial intelligence. However, the closure of Freebase did impact some applications relying on it. Other open knowledge graphs have emerged subsequently such as Wikidata to continue the goal of structured data about the world.
Freebase Features
Features
- Open knowledge graph database
- Structured data about real-world entities and events
- Collaborative data collection and curation
- APIs for querying and accessing data
- Linked open data model to connect related facts
- Entity extraction from unstructured text
- Knowledge graph visualization
Pricing
- Open Source
Pros
Massive database of structured real-world knowledge
Integrates data from many sources
Allows anyone to contribute data
Powerful APIs for building applications
Linked data model enables knowledge discovery
Free and open source
Cons
Requires technical expertise to use APIs
Data quality dependent on contributors
Limited compared to large knowledge graphs like Wikidata
Shutdown in 2016 so no longer actively developed
Official Links
The Best Freebase Alternatives
Top Online Services and Knowledge Bases and other similar apps like Freebase
Here are some alternatives to Freebase:
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The Movie Database
The Movie Database (TMDb) is a community-based movie and TV database that anyone can edit. Launched in 2008, TMDb offers users comprehensive information on over a million movies and TV shows.Key features of TMDb include:Detailed cast, crew, plot summaries, user reviews, ratings, images, videos, and more for both movies and...
Wikidata
Wikidata is a free and open knowledge base that can be read and edited by both humans and machines. It acts as central storage for the structured data of its Wikimedia sister projects including Wikipedia, Wikivoyage, Wiktionary, Wikisource, and others.Launched in 2012, Wikidata contains over 90 million data items spanning...
YAGO
YAGO is a large semantic knowledge base that was developed at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Germany. It combines information automatically extracted from several sources including:Wikipedia - YAGO extracts facts from Wikipedia info boxes and categoriesWordNet - a semantic lexicon for the English languageGeoNames - a geographic databaseUsing...
OpenCyc
OpenCyc is an open source artificial intelligence project that aims to assemble a comprehensive ontology and knowledge base containing hundreds of thousands of everyday commonsense facts about the world. The knowledge is represented in a logic-based language that enables advanced inference and reasoning. The project was started in 1984 by...