Wordster — 'A Wikipedia For Words' — Gets Funding
Wordster, an Atlanta startup that is set to soon launch what it calls a ‘Wikipedia for words’ has raised $440,000 of a $1.25 million round, according to an SEC filing. Southern tech site TechDrawl profiled the startup in May and said that it would work as a semantic reference service that could provide the correct meaning of a word based on its context (TechDrawl‘s example: In the phrase ‘decked with jewels,’ ‘deck’ has a specific meaning, but it’s unlikely to be found right away if one looks up just the word ‘deck’ in a traditional dictionary).
Gartner VP David McCoy saw a demo of the product in August and was impressed, writing on his blog, “Imagine a student being able to see a word in its ultimate complexity and full semantic relationship to other words. I like, I like.” He said that the service is being targeted at young adults, writers, as well as schools. According to TechDrawl, Wordster is trying to get middle school and high school students in the U.S. to contribute content in time for its November debut. (It will also crawl the web to look for “contextual changes”).
Wordster does not appear to have a public website yet, but it does own the Wordster.com domain, according to WhoIs records. Founder Anindya Datta has started several companies, including Chutney Technologies which was sold to Cisco (NSDQ: CSCO) in 2005. We’ve reached out to Datta to get details about the funding round.
Isn't that called a dictionary?
I think the difference here (and again details are limited to the two reports I quote) is that Wordster will be relying on a community to provide the context around words in its reference service.
– Joe Tartakoff, paidContent.org
I thought there were already purchasable databases which included all of this information. Probably wrong here.
I also don't get the focus on schoolchildren. Encarta does this by default already.
Seems like you could use http://recaptcha.net for this as well.
How can this possibly make money? Who is the audience and in what use case do they foresee people actually paying to use this (and don't say ad supported as that is not some magic cure for every stupid idea)?
I swear I'm astounded at some of the ridiculous ideas that get funding. This is probably a worse idea than GGF buying the Pirate Bay.
:/ these people have more money than sense in my opinion
Sounds like what Wordnik is already doing. Also, isn't TechDrawl something of an inside connection for these punters? Like getting your best mate to say nice things about your sister, innit?
Imagine a student being able to see a word in its ultimate complexity and full semantic relationship to other words. I like, I like..<a href="http://www.college-scholarships.com/ssac.htm">Online universities</a>