I wanted to write about this yesterday, but the site was down for a couple of hours and I couldn’t get to it. On Wednesday evening, blogger Niall Kennedy officially launched his new venture Startup Search, a directory of the web startup ecosystem — companies, products, people, and investors.
Each company, product, person, or investor has their own page on Startup Search that includes general information, logo or photo, blog posts, a Flickr photostream, and Google Map. Evan Williams‘ page, for example, includes a quick bio, photo, contact information and map, head shot, and an overview of projects he is involved with (though oddly, it does not mention Twitter).
In addition to the directory features, Startup Search provides analytical tools as well. Each entry is assigned “buzz” and “traffic” metrics. Buzz is measured using data from Technorati and Yahoo! about links and blog mentions, while traffic is measured by data from Alexa, Quantcast, and Compete. Niall hopes to add more statistical coverage in the future. Personally, I would love to see more relationship data, revealing how interconnected people in the startup ecosystem are. For example, how many degrees of separation are between Josh Kopelman and Jeff Bezos? Or, do Pierre Omidayar and Mark Cuban have any investments in common? It would be great to have that information at your fingertips.
Startup Search currently has information on 41 companies, 50 products, and 88 investors. I can easily see this site being added to my arsenal as a tech blogger. It can be hard to dig up information on past funding rounds for start ups, or who is involved with each project, and this site could certainly make that a far easier process. Startup Search will also be a fun resource for web startup junkies (as I suspect many Read/WriteWeb readers are!) assuming Niall can keep it up-to-date and continues to expand his data set.
