We’re excited to announce that these contributions no longer have to remain unattributed. Starting today, anyone with a Facebook account can sign up for an account on CrunchBase by using Facebook Connect. Edits will still be moderated (after all, this is the Internet we’re talking about here), but users who prove themselves to be trustworthy will, with time, start to see additional privileges associated with their accounts.

All of these edits represent a treasure trove of information, so we’ve also been working on ways to better present the edits as they occur. Visitors to the CrunchBase homepage will now notice a list of recent milestones - a “stream,” if you will - that represents the most recent changes to the database. We’ve filtered out the more trivial edits in an effort to make this the kind of real-time information that even Paul Carr could love. These funding rounds, acquisitions, investments, IPOs, and other major milestones will now also appear on the individual pages that they relate to.

Lastly, since it’s always better to let individuals choose what news they care about, we’re providing a way for people who sign up for a CrunchBase account to see a summary of these milestones only from the products, people and companies that are interesting to them. Logged-in users now have the ability to follow entries in the database and have relevant updates appear on their home page (sound familiar?).

If you are a developer and want to use CrunchBase data, we’ve got a very open and flexible API. And make sure to let us know when you build an app that uses CrunchBase data, we like to highlight them.

We hope you enjoy the new features, and are always taking suggestions for ways to make CrunchBase better. And if you like what we’re doing, by all means, be our friend.

The good news is that we’re nearing a point where we have put a lot of the other more pressing issues to rest and will soon be able to focus on improving CrunchBase - and trust me, no one is more excited about that than we are! Thanks for your patience while we get to that point. In the short-term, the API is back alive and well (and actually has been for some time now).

Some of the exciting things on the horizon include a redesign of the site layout, better ways for users outside of TechCrunch to contribute (and get credit for contributing), and more refined ways to interact with the raw data that powers CrunchBase. Have suggestions for features you’d like to see in the future? Leave them here in the comments, or join the CrunchBase Google Group.

And I’ll send a TechCrunch t-shirt to the first commenter to identify the reference in the title of the post.

After being behind the times for a few months, the CrunchBase logo (see above) now joins its peers across The Crunch Network with a new, sporty look. We’ve also updated the CB favicon, iPhone webclip, and the TechCrunch logo in the bottom-right-hand corner of the site. Lastly, we added the TC Network tab to the top of every CrunchBase page, so that you can more easily switch between properties in our network.

Thanks to TC Alumnus Mark Hendrickson for the original designs, and super intern Dan Romero for putting it all together.

If you’re an API developer and want to use CrunchBase art for your app, the files are available here for download.

Permalink API

Ever needed to find a corresponding CrunchBase page for a particular Company/Person/Financial Org name? Well, we now have an API for that which is easier to use than our Search API.

Syntax

For all entities except people:

http://api.crunchbase.com/v/1/<plural entity namespace>/permalink?name=<entity name>

For people:

http://api.crunchbase.com/v/1/people/permalink?first_name=<person first name>&last_name=<person last name>

Examples

• http://api.crunchbase.com/v/1/companies/permalink?name=Google
• http://api.crunchbase.com/v/1/financial-organizations/permalink?name=Sequoia%20Capital
• http://api.crunchbase.com/v/1/products/permalink?name=iPhone
• http://api.crunchbase.com/v/1/people/permalink?first_name=Ron&last_name=Conway

Returns

If the permalink is found, JSON will be returned in the following format (this one for companies):

{”name”: “Google”,
“crunchbase_url”: “http://www.crunchbase.com/company/google”,
“permalink”: “google”}

If a permalink is not found, the HTTP status code will be 404 and the JSON return will be (note that this is a 404 for companies):

{”error”: “Unknown company. Please see www.crunchbase.com/help/api for help.”}

Notes

The entity name (or for people, first and last name) is case-insensitive. Replace any spaces in the entity name with ‘%20′.

TechCrunch Posts API

Want data on how many times a particular company has been written about on TechCrunch? Well, you can do that now as well. The syntax is very similar to the Permalink API, above. You start with an entity name.

Syntax

For all entities except people:

http://api.crunchbase.com/v/1/<plural entity namespace>/posts?name=<entity name>

For people:

http://api.crunchbase.com/v/1/people/posts?first_name=<person first name>&last_name=<person last name>

Examples:

• http://api.crunchbase.com/v/1/companies/posts?name=Google
• http://api.crunchbase.com/v/1/financial-organizations/posts?name=Sequoia%20Capital
• http://api.crunchbase.com/v/1/products/posts?name=iPhone
• http://api.crunchbase.com/v/1/people/posts?first_name=Ron&last_name=Conway

If any posts are found, JSON will be returned in the following format (this one for companies):

{”posts_url”: “http://www.crunchbase.com/company/google/posts”,
“num_posts”: 1174,
“name”: “Google”,
“crunchbase_url”: “http://www.crunchbase.com/company/google”,
“permalink”: “google”}

If no posts are found, the HTTP status code will be 404 and the JSON return will be (note that this is a 404 for companies):

{”error”: “Unknown company. Please see www.crunchbase.com/help/api for help.”}

Notes

The entity name (or for people, first and last name) is case-insensitive. Replace any spaces in the entity name with ‘%20′.

Questions? Comments? Head over to the CrunchBase API group.

Jeremiah Owyang, a sr analyst for Forrester Research and general internet strategist, was one of the first media professionals to reach out and offer to give us a read Friday night. Within a few hours, I was both surprised and impressed to see his review of the research. It’s a very fair commentary. (Forrester has been at this for years.) Like many v1 TechCrunch products, Jeremiah is correct that the report offers a lot of valuable data and needs additional polish.

We’d love more constructive criticism about our latest research initiative. If you’d like a chance to review the 2008 Year In Review and share your recommendations, please contact us.

Here’s a cool usage of the CrunchBase API: The CrunchBase Shot. Snap Technologies is the company behind Snap Shots, the link enhancer that ’shoots’ you to webpages without actually leaving the page that you’re on.

Now Snap recognizes links to CrunchBase, and thanks our API, creates a custom view template that looks quite nice. Snap serves a ton of traffic every month, and so it’s great that they can provide a clean looking interface for CrunchBase entities.

We love seeing our API being used in the wild. Please drop us a note on our API Google Group if you see it anywhere!

A bunch of Austin entrepreneurs and CrunchBase fans are hosting a Data Mob to highlight Austin startups and get their data into CrunchBase.  Very cool. If you want to set one up in your city let us know in the comments of this post.

—————————————-

Join us for the first-ever Austin Data Mob!

On Tuesday September 23rd, we will gather for free beer, soda, pizza and Tiff’s Treats at Conjunctured to enter information about Austin companies into CrunchBase en masse.

What is a data mob?

Data mobs have been most successfully implemented by Freebase, a semantic database company located in San Francisco California. It’s a fun way to bring offline information online – and in so doing move us a little bit closer to the idea of a global knowledge commons. Data mobs are also just a great excuse to hang out, listen to music, eat, drink, and learn about cool new companies.

Why all the effort?

CrunchBase is an open-source database tracking technology companies around the world, and as such is widely used and cited. CrunchBase was developed by TechCrunch, and specifically Henry Work and his team of merry Ruby pranksters. Henry has also been so kind as to give us a direct-access account that will push our new data live to CrunchBase immediately (and with great power comes great responsibility).

There is a lot of amazing stuff going on in Austin that doesn’t get the recognition that it deserves.  This is one of many initiatives to heighten Austin’s national profile and promote the great community of entrepreneurs and technologists who reside here. We want new companies to, as John Erik is wont to say, “Ditch the Valley and Head for the Hills”.

We are Austin, and we are Startup District.

Okay, gimme the deets:

Date: Tuesday, September 23nd.
Time: 7:30 p.m. – ’til
Location: Conjunctured, 1309 E. 7th Street

Sponsors: Porter Novelli, Conjunctured, Austin Startup, and Moximity.

RSVP on Facebook:

http://www.new.facebook.com/editevent.php?eid=39754791150#/event.php?eid=39754791150&ref=mf

Or Upcoming:

http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1108005/?ps=6

OK, ok, I know it’s lame to cross-post.  So here’s the skinny: our API got a new logo (isn’t is sweet? Thanks Hendrickson).  We’re releasing our API stats from its first month of usage (also sweet).  And we’re showcasing a few really awesome products now using our fine API (definitely sweet).  That’s all you need to know.  But you should go check out the article on TechCrunch I labored for almost 12 minutes over, complete with griping title: Some CrunchBase API Stats and Apps.