I created Crunchbase within TC. It goes down all the time because every dev TC had has left, most of us prior to the acquisition. I believe there is a single person there atm looking after everything, and the mixed environment (RoR for CB, PHP for the rest) doesn't help.
Nothing has been added to CB since I left - because I assume that the dev who is there is now stuck in the trap of administering what is there and not having the time to do development. CB is also hosted separately, and while it does go down, it just needs some TLC and a cleanup.
There is no way they will hand it over. It is worth far too much. They just needed a kick in the butt to get it back in order. CB ranks far too well on startup terms, has a lot of its own traffic, and is probably worth $10M+ on its own.
If you are a RoR dev and want to work on CrunchBase, I suggest you ping them (note I have no idea what the situation there is atm)
On the other hand, there is a legacy in my decision to make the API unrestricted and just simple json output. So CB can never disappear or be controlled. An application can get to the data as easily as a user can. The license is also super-liberal, all that is required to use the data is attribution (it's CC-Attribution). If you are ever implementing an API for an important community resource I suggest you do the same and forget API keys and all that.
Henry Work and Mark McGranaghan deserve the bulk of the credit for today's CrunchBase, IMO. They (re)coded the guts of it in early 2008 and put in place the API. Others also deserve props for improving it over the years (Andy Brett comes to mind but there are others with whom I'm less familiar such as Ben Schaechter). Not to mention those who have led efforts to maintain and improve its content, such as Gene Teare.
Like others in this thread, I'd love to see CrunchBase get more developer attention, and accordingly, I agree that talented RoR developers who are interested in big data should consider applying. There's a lot of great stuff that can be done with CrunchBase's data and for its audience.
Ye I agree. Big part of the reason it rocks is because of the data that is entered every day, which is still happening. I just checked the feed and it is averaging 20+ items per day, which is what has kept it as the main source of startup info.
The OP gripe is about it being down, slow etc. and the stagnation in dev - all of that shouldn't be hard to fix (and it may well be on the way to getting fixed) and it certainly isn't at the point of neglect where they should consider giving it to somebody else.
Nothing has been added to CB since I left - because I assume that the dev who is there is now stuck in the trap of administering what is there and not having the time to do development. CB is also hosted separately, and while it does go down, it just needs some TLC and a cleanup.
There is no way they will hand it over. It is worth far too much. They just needed a kick in the butt to get it back in order. CB ranks far too well on startup terms, has a lot of its own traffic, and is probably worth $10M+ on its own.
If you are a RoR dev and want to work on CrunchBase, I suggest you ping them (note I have no idea what the situation there is atm)
On the other hand, there is a legacy in my decision to make the API unrestricted and just simple json output. So CB can never disappear or be controlled. An application can get to the data as easily as a user can. The license is also super-liberal, all that is required to use the data is attribution (it's CC-Attribution). If you are ever implementing an API for an important community resource I suggest you do the same and forget API keys and all that.