Big news around Kosmix HQ today:  we’ve just acquired Cruxlux.

Cruxlux is an awesome startup that specializes in determining the relationships between people, places or things.  TechCrunch equates Cruxlux with the party game ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’, and that’s an apt comparison.  Cruxlux lets you chart each connection that links one person or thing to another.  How, for example, is Bono connected to Larry Ellison?  Cruxlux tells us that 1) Bono has collaborated with Bob Dylan; 2) Bob Dylan used to go out with Joan Baez; 3) Joan Baez lives in Woodside, California; and 4) Larry Ellison is Joan’s neighbor in Woodside.  Pretty cool, eh?

While we could spend hours playing the Kevin Bacon game with Cruxlux (and we have!), the real value of the Cruxlux technology  for Kosmix is the advanced algorithms it uses to understand relationships.  The Cruxlux team and technology fits perfectly with the work we’ve been doing in our “Related in the Kosmos” section on each topic page, and we expect to integrate Cruxlux tightly into Kosmix.  Watch this space.

This is the first acquisition for Kosmix, and we’re excited to have the Cruxlux team on board!