The Biographicon was a

wiki A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pu ...

-based website containing

biographies A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just the basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or c ...

of famous and non-famous people, that existed from March to August 2008. The site also showed connections between individuals covered, and explained the circumstances under which they met. The site was launched on March 1, 2008 by computer programmer Ethan Herdrick and business partner Daniel Terhorst. The site had received a small amount of

seed funding Seed money, sometimes known as seed funding or seed capital, is a form of securities offering in which an investor invests capital in a startup company in exchange for an equity stake or convertible note stake in the company. The term ''seed'' su ...

from venture capital firm

Y Combinator Y Combinator (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator launched in March 2005. It has been used to launch more than 3,000 companies, including Airbnb, Coinbase, Cruise, DoorDash, Dropbox, Instacart, Quora, PagerDuty, Reddit, Str ...

. Herdrick served as the company's

Chief Executive Officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

, while Terhorst was Chief Technology Officer. The blog ''The Wired Campus'' labelled the Biographicon "

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...

for non-

notables An Assembly of Notables (French: ''Assemblée des notables'') was a group of high-ranking nobles, ecclesiastics, and state functionaries convened by the King of France on extraordinary occasions to consult on matters of state. Assemblymen were p ...

" in reference to the fact that unlike the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, the Biographicon did not have a notability threshold for inclusion, operating under the tagline "all the people of the world". Writing for ''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

'',

Rhodri Marsden Rhodri Marsden (born 1 October 1971) is a London-based writer and musician. Journalism Prior to the demise of the print edition of ''The Independent'', Marsden wrote a technology column for nearly ten years, along with other columns on a range o ...

commented that on the Biographicon, "anyone can put up details about themselves without fear of being nominated for deletion", though he noted that since the site operated using wiki software, "there's always the chance that someone will log in and alter your entry to include the time you cried on a school trip because someone stole your sandwiches." ''

Ars Technica ''Ars Technica'' is a website covering news and opinions in technology, science, politics, and society, created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews, and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, sci ...

'' describes it as "a potential "

who's who ''Who's Who'' (or ''Who is Who'') is the title of a number of reference publications, generally containing concise biography, biographical information on the prominent people of a country. The title has been adopted as an expression meaning a gr ...

" of world history."

Michael Arrington J. Michael Arrington (born March 13, 1970) is the American founder and former co-editor of TechCrunch, a blog covering the Silicon Valley technology start-up communities and the wider technology field in America and elsewhere. Magazines such as ...

TechCrunch TechCrunch is an American online newspaper focusing on high tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. In 2010, AOL acquired the company for approximately ...

noted that it might have problems gaining traction. On August 21, 2008, the website was shut down, due to what its founders called "insufficient user interest in the site." A brief attempt to restore the site soon afterward proved unsuccessful.

References

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External links

* https://web.archive.org/web/20080511164311/http://www.biographicon.com/ Internet properties established in 2008 Web directories Free-content websites Wikis Internet properties disestablished in 2008