This article was published on August 4, 2015

Makerbase is the ultimate directory of who made what in tech


Makerbase is the ultimate directory of who made what in tech

Makerbase is a new project that hopes to be a collection of people and their digital creations, or a directory of who’s who of tech.

It’s a reference for if you’re trying to find out who the people are behind an app or website. Think of it as a mashup of IMDB and Wikipedia.

The new service was built by Anil Dash and Gina Trapani, the founders behind social insight service ThinkUp.

Makerbase is free and fully editable by any signed in user, which allows anyone to add information about a maker or project. Makerbase then pulls in information automatically from Twitter or the App Store.

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The pair built the service “because music has liner notes and movies have credits, but what do apps have?”

Dash said that it’s a “powerful tool for opening up opportunity in the industry” because it gives those outside of it insight into who’s making things and how to contact them.

That resonates with me, as a journalist, as it’s often incredibly difficult to find out who’s behind a project outside of hunting them down on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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Makerbase also tracks changes to projects over time, so you can see how the description evolved over the years. It’s easy to use and add your own projects — you can see mine, for example, here.

To keep the service free, Makerbase is selling sponsorships and has Slack, Hover and Mailchimp on board at launch. Makers can indicate if they used the sponsor services to build their projects.

Makerbase is also part of The White House’s demo day today.

If you want to get yourself on the service all you’ll need is a Twitter profile to sign in.

I like the premise of Makerbase, even though it’s fairly basic right now. It’s far more useful than LinkedIn for getting information in the tech industry — if it gains a critical mass of users, it could be the new go-to place for tracking what people are up to in their professional lives.

➤ Makerbase

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