"Please use this thread for a discussion on the general Metaweb concept. "
Freebase is an open database of the world’s information. "Open" means it's built by the community, for the community — anyone can contribute information, create collections of information to share with others, or build applications that use our API. It also means that the database is freely, openly licensed. Freebase already contains millions of facts in dozens of categories spanning people, locations, books, movies, music, companies, science, sports, and more, and is growing daily, thanks to the efforts of a passionate, global user community.
Freebase is unique among online databases because a single Freebase topic can encompass many different kinds of information. In other databases there would have to be a separate topic for each category, or a completely separate database. For example, Arnold Schwarzenegger would appear in a movie database as an actor, a political database as a governor, and a bodybuilder database as a Mr. Universe. In Freebase there is one topic for Arnold Schwarzenegger that contains information about all three facets of his public life. The unified topic acts as an information hub, making it easy to find and contribute information about him regardless of what kind of information it is.
What makes this possible is a flexible underlying structure that is very different from conventional databases that use rigid organizational structures, or schema, to organize information. Freebase's open, wiki-like approach to information organization means that Freebase can grow without formal, centralized planning. As a result, anyone can contribute information about their areas of interest, create new schemas to organize information, or build collections of topics that reveal new, interesting, and fun relationships among their subjects. The technically inclined can even develop their own applications that use Freebase information. We provide application developers with tools like API services, the Metaweb Query Language, and the hosted Acre development environment, and they create applications for new Web browsing experiences, finding buildings designed by famous architects, or showing who influenced who.
