TechBays

Today I received another Dealipedia Daily email (see below) on deals happening today, such as the Yahoo! acquisition of Maven Network. Dealipedia is a business wiki for venture investments, IPO, mergers, acquisitions and other deals.

Yesterday Techcrunch announced an update to their Crunchbase service, which is a directory of technology companies, people, and investors.

I normally get this kind of data mostly from Techcrunch, Mashable, and CNET. Mashable covers technology deals but it doesn’t have a database to keep related data on the company and its people. I looked for these related data in CNET and also cannot find them. Techcrunch on the other hand integrates their technology coverage with Crunchbase, which is the way to go with this kind of news service. And now comes Dealipedia.

Who does the updating?

For Techcrunch, the interns do the work by adding data received by email. Yesterday Techcrunch reported the following Crunchbase figures: 1,515 companies, 4,499 people, and 762 financial investors. Today, Crunchbase has 1,586 companies, 4,654 people, and 768 financial organizations. In only about half a day Crunchbase has added 71 new companies. I’m sure there are new user generated content because it’s easy to udpate data in Crunchbase.

• Crunchbase also has an approval process, which is the proper way to do to avoid spam. This would mean setting up an editorial team once this service grows. Similar to what Mahalo is doing with its Mahalo Guides and Mahalo Greenhouse. Crunchbase can develop a toolbar similar to Mahalo’s to make the update process faster and easier.

Dealipedia has been updated by three super users, who seem to be the only people adding new data to the site. There are anonymous updates though. Considering it’s a newcomer, Dealipedia already has 18,140 transactions covered.

• While it has so many transactions covered, there are only a few ways a user can interact with the site. You can add or update deals, yes. But that’s about it. Although there is plan to add company details based on email I received from its founder, Michael Robertson. Dealipedia can also add tagging to its features. Tagging is a familiar interaction feature for startup and web2.0 users.

Features

Crunchbase has the following features I like:

• Layout allows easy navigation to look for data; including its tagging function
• RSS feeds for recently added, recently launched, recently funded, recently acquired
• Incoming links also tell you who are actively reviewing Crunchbase data
• Facility to contribute Company, Financial Organization, Person, and Service Organization
• Facility to add widget so you can display more details of a company (not much details though as of now)
• Facility to add video to a company’s profile

Dealipedia has the following features I like:

• A daily and weekly summary of deals delivered by email
• Extensive collection of transactions
• Reporting view of M&A, Investment, IPO, Weekly deal count
• Reporting on who actually made money on deals

Suggestions

Crunchbase can also add Techcrunch deals coverage as a section in the homepage. Currently when you edit a company’s profile page, there are options for categories Funding, Exit, Acquisitions. Crunchbase can add these updates as a report in the front page. This will allow users to actively participate in linking news coverage of their favorite startups or companies.

Dealipedia can add RSS and company profile features to make the site more interactive with users. They can also outsource company profiles from another database provider and integrate it with their site to add immediate volume, or create a db with another set of superuser company profilers. Dealipedia can also continue to give unique reporting tools.

Overall Crunchbase has the tools to create a more dynamic community that can grow rapidly. Dealipedia has the most extensive coverage of transactions making it a must-read resource. We’ll continue to monitor these sites in the coming months.

Screenshots

Dealipedia and Crunchbase (click again after the jump)

Dealipedia Daily Email

Dealipedia Sample Report: Who made money?

Crunchbase Tagging