Freebase.com is home to a global knowledge base: a structured, searchable, writeable and editable database built by a community of contributors, and open to everyone. It could be described as a data commons.
It's about film, sports, politics, music, science and everything else all connected together. Our contributors are collecting data from all over the internet to build a massive, collaboratively-edited database of cross-linked data. Its a big job and we're just getting started.
How is Freebase different than the Wikipedia?
It's an apple versus an orange: each is deliciously different. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia with information arranged in the form of articles. Freebase is more of an almanac, organized like a database, and readable by people or software. Wikipedia and Freebase both appeal to people who love to use and organize information. In fact, many of the founding contributors to Freebase are also active in the Wikipedia community. Whenever Freebase and Wikipedia cover the same topic, Freebase will link to the Wikipedia article to make it easy for users to access the best of both sites.