

BuzzData: A social network designed for data (beta coming soon) - Momoko11
http://buzzdata.com/about/

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afiler
I'm glad to see something coming in this space. I had been very sad to see
DabbleDB go away, and Google Fusion Tables, Google Refine, and Google Docs
Spreadsheets seem promising yet somewhat neglected, unfocused, and disjoint.

Surely, though, there must be a more descriptive term for this than a "social
network"? Even though you could consider it (to some degree) to be a social
network, Github doesn't describe itself as one.

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peteforde
Dude.

Help us find better words. We hate it at least as much as you do. If someone
told me two years ago that I'd be passionately building a social network in
2011, I'd have laughed in their face.

That said, it's inarguable that you all knew what we were talking about, even
if you groaned. That's what we're up against.

All I can ask is that you suspend your judgement and assume that this is the
effort of people with a clue. We're motivated to be loved, not hated.

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afiler
If I were going to describe this to a friend, I'd probably say "like flickr,
but for data"... not something you can put in marketing materials, I know.

I'd like to abuse this reply to ask that when you add tools for geodata, that
you please please please do what you can to help people produce visualizations
and rankings that are not horribly skewed by poor choices of geographic
boundaries.

I know this is a hard problem, but for people who don't do this all the time,
it's really easy to end up with a headline like "Manhattan Leads the City in
Pedestrian Deaths Per Square Mile, Study Finds" (Manhattan is, of course, the
densest borough in New York City, so this probably isn't terribly useful
information). I've seen maps that might show, for example, the areas of the US
with the highest number of coffee shops per square mile, but the map is done
based on counties, so here in Seattle we end up not looking terribly dense
since over half of gigantic King County is mountainous and unpopulated.

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peteforde
I can do two better:

1\. Give us good feedback on the things you care about, and we'll listen.
We're a small team and we're listening to everything people tell us.

2\. We're specifically not providing tools that create visualizations. There's
a hundred startups and software products that already do this. BuzzData is
where you put your visualizations and articles and apps when you're done.

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arkitaip
Interesting project. What type of data are we talking about? Would you host
leaked data a la Wikileaks?

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peteforde
Out of the gate, we're dealing with tabular datasets — think CSV, TSV, Excel
and soon Stata/SPSS.

In the Fall, we'll be adding support for map shape data and structured/node in
the form of JSON/XML.

Politically, we're trying our best to be a neutral common carrier in the same
way that Vimeo, Flickr and Scribd are.

We're progressive individuals so we'll try to stay on the side of fighting the
good fight. <\- not approved by legal :)

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arkitaip
I read your blog and discovered ScraperWiki through it (thanks!) so it makes a
lot of sense that you're primarily focusing on structured and re-usable data.

Would love to see some big picture blog post on the web data gathering and
transformation eco system, e.g. how all the different tools/services -
scrapers, rss, FreeBase, Yahoo Pipes, InfoChimps, etc - can be used in real
business cases. Right now there seems to be a rich rhizome growing but the big
picture issues are hidden beneath the soil.

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peteforde
You're speaking to where we want to see all of this go.

There's no easy answers, but you might want to check out:

<http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/23/flightcaster-flight-delay/>

[http://eaves.ca/2011/03/07/launching-an-open-data-
business-r...](http://eaves.ca/2011/03/07/launching-an-open-data-business-
recollect-net-vantrash-2-0/)

[http://measuringmeasures.com/blog/2010/7/2/research-
driven-s...](http://measuringmeasures.com/blog/2010/7/2/research-driven-
startups.html)

I have also ordered Sarah Lacy's new book, about info entrepreneurs in the
developing world:

[http://www.amazon.ca/Brilliant-Crazy-Cocky-Entrepreneurs-
Pro...](http://www.amazon.ca/Brilliant-Crazy-Cocky-Entrepreneurs-
Profit/dp/0470580097/)

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jmacd
I've seen Pete speak about BuzzData and his vision in general -- I can't wait
to see this launch!

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rewind
Just an aside, but you specifically explain the proper spelling of your name
as "BuzzData", but your logo uses a lowercase "d" while still using an
uppercase "B", i.e. "Buzzdata" instead of "BuzzData". Not important, just
thought I'd point out the discrepancy.

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peteforde
It's actually a conscious decision made by our branding team, and there's a
blog post explaining our process coming in the future.

Death, taxes and branding. Sigh.

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dgudkov
So what do you do guys?

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peteforde
Lots of stuff! More than I have time to type into this textarea.

I can say what we're _not_ , however. BuzzData is NOT "a web-service for
creating live embeddable charts with comments" so don't tase me, bro. :)

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dgudkov
That's nice, will sleep better ;) Seriously, what's your 1-paragraph pitch?
Too many general words on your web site.

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peteforde
If you know how to fix that problem, then you're in the wrong business.

Also, if you want to level that criticism, I suggest you spend a few minutes
trying to understand what Vertica.com is offering. :)

