Technology blog VentureBeat has announced this morning at the DEMO conference that it has acquired crowd sourced company database startup Tradevibes for an undisclosed sum.

VentureBeat is renaming the service VentureBeatProfiles, and selling the new incarnation as a platform to “discover, research, and share information and opinions about companies.” Along with the core TradeVibes data and platform, VentureBeat is promising that the site will become even better — “making it much more useful to the hundreds of thousands of users that visit VentureBeat each month.” Additional features include support for press releases and conversation tracking.

The acquisition of Tradevibes by VentureBeat is being pitched as positioning VentureBeat as a serious challenger to TechCrunch. Why you’d want to challenge TechCrunch to begin with is interesting, but likewise the parallels are obvious: VentureBeat now organizes the DEMO conference (vs TechCrunch with TechCrunch 50), both sites write about serious startups…well, VentureBeat does more often, both sites compete for the attention of the Silicon Valley tech community, and now both sites sport a company database.

Tradevibes parent company Mill River Labs was funded by a $900,000 round in March 2008 from investors incuding Ron Conway, Aydin Senkut, Dave McClure, and the Kinsey Hills Group. The company has struggled at times due to its emphasis on crowd sourcing data vs creating it in-house, however its smart outreach in providing joint sites has positioned it as a worthy player in the space.

Disclosure: we have a relationship with Tradevibes for the provision of Qbase (see “Company Database) in the nav bar.

VentureBeat acquires Tradevibes is a post from: The Inquisitr

If you’ve not jumped in to QBase yet, it’s a great place to discuss the latest startups, contribute links and information, and even get some traffic back.

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Remember, if you’re a startup, and you’re not on QBase/ Tradevibes yet, you are missing out on eyeballs from The Inquisitr, Mashable and ReadWriteWeb, so get moving, and click here to sign up.

What was hot on QBase last week is a post from: The Inquisitr

Every now and then we’ll be updating what’s hot and new on QBase. If you haven’t checked it out yet or registered, click here. All data is user contributed and shared across the Tradevibes network, including Mashable’s MashCoInfo. You can also add relevant stories from other sites or your own site, and the service also includes startup discussions and even social voting on the biggest stories of the day. If you’re a startup and you’re not listed yet, what are you waiting for?

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What was hot on QBase last week is a post from: The Inquisitr

Scale is important when offering any service like this, which is why we’ve teamed up with Tradevibes for the service as opposed to doing it by ourselves.

As I wrote in my review of companies in this space June 12, Tradevibes appeal comes from its collaborative approach to data, being a focused wiki from the start that values user contributions as it is built on them. That collaborative model extends to data sharing with other sites, for example Mashable has a similar deal in place with Tradevibes, so contributions from QBase will also appear on Mashable’s service, as their contributions will be visible here.

There was some emotion involved with going with a product like this, however a compelling pitch and product ultimately won the day for Tradevibes. It is not an attack on anybody else, despite the delusional private rants of one competitor preceding this announcement. I have long preached that the build it and they will come days have past, and Tradevibes is a company that gets it, while others are completely clueless. I also have faith in Tradevibes ability to move forward in a competitive space, with investors such as Dave McClure and Ron Conway backing the company.

Please feel free to visit QBase and register if you haven’t already (you sign up for a Tradevibe’s account, so you can use it across any Tradevibes derived property). Naturally you can edit or add information about any company, including your own, and you can also add links to stories on companies as you see fit (no spam please, but context is perfectly fine). If you do need to place company information on your blog or website check out the easy to use widget on each page. You’ll be seeing them regularly here on The Inquisitr (not every post, but where they fit and add to a story), and it’s a handy feature.

Introducing QBase is a post from: The Inquisitr

Information

Crunchbase and Tradevibes are immediately similar in the information they provide, to the point that Michael Arrington has previously described Tradevibes as a Crunchbase ripoff. It’s a fair call only to a point: it’s easy to argue that Crunchbase is really a well formatted free version of Killerstartups, and all share similarities to Wikipedia as well. Ultimately all are information products based on databases, and databases have been around since at least the 60s.

The key difference is in how the information both have is submitted. Crunchbase is a TechCrunch controlled database that takes user suggestions (every submission must be approved) but primarily is added to via TechCrunch employees. Tradevibes on the other hand is a user generated wiki combined with auto generated information.

People can spend hours arguing of the merits of one model or another, but it ultimately comes down to the wisdom of editors vs the wisdom of the crowd. On comparison might be Encyclopedia Britannica vs Wikipedia. TechCrunch is on the record saying they would be moving to a Wiki style model, although this was originally promised for March.

Social

One definite advantage Tradevibes has is that in being generated by users it offers social features as well. Users can vote up or vote down companies (bullish or bearish) and have discussions around companies and news relating to the company. Users also get profile pages and can add companies to a watch list.

The argument against this is whether company profile information is compelling enough to support a user community. I don’t have figures from Tradevibes but it would appear that the answer so far is yes, least there was a reasonable level of recent activity (25+ actions) in the hour leading to me checking the page. The site also offers forums and job boards as well.

Widgets

The key battleground for Crunchbase and Tradevibes may well be with company information widgets. Crunchbase was the first to offer info widgets, but Tradevibes now offers more flexible options.

Crunchbase widget: no customization options. Does resize though to fit page

Tradevibes: customizable, with users able to remove headlines or detailed information, or even add more detailed information. For those who don’t mind a little coding, there’s a customization page explaining how the widget can be customized even more. The obvious negative: width isn’t a variable and it presents in the one size (at least at the time of writing).

Reasons to Use Widgets

I’ve used Crunchbase widgets here on The Inquisitr before as a value add for readers wanting to find more information about a company featured, however one thing holding me back has been the inability to customize the widget to fit (they’re rather large, and don’t sit nicely on the front page). Tradevibes has width issues but I can shrink them down so they become somewhat more appealing. However both lack compelling incentives aside from offering information to your visitors to actually use them.

Crunchbase lists sites linking to each Crunchbase page in the right hand sidebar of each entry (and by linking this is 99% of the time someone using the widget) and yet the links are tagged link=nofollow in the sidebar where as the Crunchbase widget links are not: they want the Google juice but are not willing to share it back.

Tradevibes on the other hand doesn’t offer automated links back, but through its community submissions does list links to relevant external content, without placing Google condoms on the links. However this is not tied into the display of Tradevibes widgets so there is no direct incentive to use one.

Where Tradevibes gets interesting is with their Mashable deal, where Tradevibes offers a co-branded page, in this case the interestingly named MashCoInfo (Pete, what were you thinking?). Mashable gets its own Crunchbase style service powered by Tradevibes and Tradevibes presumably gets more traffic and new users. I have no idea if money changed hands but I did ping Tradevibes about cobranded sites and they let me know that they are done on a site to site basis. I won’t lie: it immediately has appeal as a value add for The Inquisitr, as I’m sure it may well do for other tech sites.

Conclusion
I’ve written countless pages for Crunchbase over the last year so I immediately have a built in bias. Since leaving TechCrunch I still use the service pretty much every day and it offers a great depth of company information that is most importantly easy to find and easy to follow. However, Tradevibes is a smart setup and as a standalone, funded startup (the founders are ex-Paypal) that is only focused on their core product (as opposed to Crunchbase which is a part of the TechCrunch empire), they have the potential to become the number one destination in this space. Crunchbase will need to start offering more and soon or they risk being left behind.

Battle of the Company Databases: Crunchbase Vs Tradevibes is a post from: The Inquisitr