Comments on: Creating a corporation tracker

By: Tim McCormack

Tim McCormack — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 17:06:39 +0000

Sally, this is an excellent find. Thank you so much! I might be able to use their database to bootstrap mine.

By: Sally Carson

Sally Carson — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 16:21:59 +0000

Hey Tim, I just found this the other day - click through the first few screens and you'll get to a Flash-based visual diagram of companies and who their Directors are. It's not the best for randomly discovering relationships between the many companies since you have to poke around somewhat blindly to make connections. But, it's useful if you had a targeted search, like if you specifically wanted to find out about Procter & Gamble and their relationships with other companies.

By: Tim McCormack

Tim McCormack — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 14:16:12 +0000

I may just leave this idea out here for the taking, because I've got a new project now -- and this one is taking off. I've bought a domain and hosting space, and the coding has begun. I'll post details in the coming week.

By: James Weber

James Weber — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 13:53:22 +0000

I don't know if we talked about this, but there is a company called CapitalIQ in NY that does this on a larger scale and sells it to investment bankers et al. I know they track CEOs as they move from company to company and I am sure they must track mergers, etc too. However, it costs lots of $$. Researching it could give you some good background.

To the point of using it to choose socially responsible and natural companies, thats a interesting idea. I know my sister would love that!

By: Tim

Tim — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 00:27:12 +0000

The thought occurs to me that one of our own local companys (SNL) would have skads of info about corporate structure, ownership, governance, etc...of course it cost alot to purchase their datafeed. Perhaps acquiring the names of the top 500 companies from which all others derive their root ownership is possible and the rest of the world fills in the properties/attributes/metadata as it evolves.

Your idea has me wondering who the root corps are...and would the answer suprise me?

By: Tim McCormack

Tim McCormack — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 17:30:39 +0000

Yup. I'm planning on making the database available through an API, like Flickr and Google Maps do.

Imagine being in the grocery store with your Bluetooth device, wondering why a certain brand of food sounds so familiar. You punch the brand name into a program on your PDA, and it retrieves the corporation's name and a short summary from Wikipedia. You find that the corporation also manufactures pesticides and cigarettes, and decide to buy a competitor's brand instead.

That's the eventual goal.

(By the way, if anyone wants to take this idea and run with it -- go for it!)