Business

Business: Industry parent/child vs. Industrial Classification parent/child

2008-08-02T03:21:05.0000Z

After further investigation, it transpires that the NAICS and SIC classifications were added to /business/industry some time ago. So we plan to deprecate industry_classification. All the same info is available in the other type. I have moved the few current uses of specific industry classifications over to their corresponding industry and plan to retire the type altogether since its no longer in use.

Business: Divisions & Brands?

2008-08-01T19:20:15.0012Z

ooh, I think that works! I like how you have the options of indicating whether or not it was acquired, etc (which happens a lot). Thanks, Jeff

Business: Divisions & Brands?

2008-08-01T18:24:18.0012Z

Take a peek over on sandbox: I just posted a proposed modification to the company schema to handle divisions on sandbox. See https://sandbox.freebase.com/view/en/remington_rand for an example (example expires Monday!).

Business: Divisions & Brands?

2008-08-01T15:42:35.0017Z

Seeing the Calvin Klein Underwear topic with the type of Company attached to it, made me wonder how we want to handle divisions and brands.

I believe the intent for the Company schema is to flag legal companies, like Calvin Klein Inc or General Dynamics Corp. So parent companies and their subsidiaries. If correct, then divisions and brands would not be assigned to the Company type.

If so, then we may need a way to flag topics as a division (or perhaps we do this somehow in the Company schema). Same with brands, which are not always separated from the parent company.

Business: Industry parent/child vs. Industrial Classification parent/child

2008-08-01T06:49:59.0000Z

I think this is correct, that the generic product is not represented well by the NAICS codes. For example the closest you get to 'Petroleum' in the NAICS tree is:

Petroleum and Coal Products Manufacturing   324
    Petroleum and Coal Products Manufacturing   3241
        Petroleum Refineries
        Asphalt Paving, Roofing, and Saturated Materials Manufacturing
        Other Petroleum and Coal Products Manufacturing
             ... all the way down to
                   Petroleum Refineries 324110

Which is clearly not what you want. I do think though that the classification of companies is going to have to come in two flavours, the topic based /business/company/industry and a different property linking to the NAICS (and hence SIC and other codes that map to that same classification).

It would be very hard to merge the industry tree with the NAICS tree without creating new things that had no NAICS codes.

On the topic of NACE, SIC equivalences etc, the plan would be to load them all.

Business: Industry parent/child vs. Industrial Classification parent/child

2008-07-31T22:11:28.0012Z

Import/export actually expects "industry", which is more general than "industrial classification". Instances of the industry include things like Computers, Consumer electronics, and Petroleum, which are values I would expect to see as imports and exports. I think this is the advantage of keeping the two types separate -- they have slightly different semantics which are useful in different contexts.

Business: Industry parent/child vs. Industrial Classification parent/child

2008-07-31T16:25:26.0012Z

I'm not sure where to begin on this one.

It is not odd to have more than just NAICS, which is North America specific. NACE is used in the EU, and some countries even have their own classification (like France, the NAF).

And I know D&B still widely uses SIC Code, even though it has been replaced.

I am not familiar with all the codes in the type, but we should research first before removing any, to make sure we're not making the fields North America specific, or if the codes are standard for some reason that is not readily obvious.

As for Industry vs Industrial Classification, I know when I was filling in the Export/Import information in countries, using the CIA World Factbook as a guide, it was difficult or impossible to fill certain values in. You can't export "Petroleum and Coal Products Manufacturing", instead you export the actual product. So not sure if that means the export/import fields need to be changed or we need another field/category for the industrial classification (less doable)? Or we just live with non-intuitive values in the import/export fields??

Business: New properties

2008-07-30T08:41:14.0005Z

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Business: Industry parent/child vs. Industrial Classification parent/child

2008-07-30T08:36:47.0012Z

agree above guys

from http://english.51766.com by lisa

Business: Joint Ventures

2008-07-18T16:31:52.0005Z

How do we want to do JVs? Technically the companies that "own" the JV would go under Major Shareholders, however there's no way to actually designate the JV as a JV (as opposed to a "regular" company that is public and has shareholders).

Perhaps it could be a Company Type?

Business: DUNS and ISIN identifer fields for company?

2008-07-18T00:11:56.0007Z

You have to pay to use D&B information, so I don't think we'd be able to use the DUNS # here.

Business: DUNS and ISIN identifer fields for company?

2008-06-27T17:03:01.0005Z

I think it'll be a good idea if these two fields are included for the company type to identify companies...

The DUNS number is widely used and is required by the US government for grants and contracts.

www.dnb.com/US/duns_update

The ISIN seems to be gaining traction in europe and its a ISO standard

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Securities_Identifying_Number

Business: New properties

2008-06-24T19:22:41.0012Z

A suggestion is to add an "End date" property to the Company_name_change type.

Business: New properties

2008-06-24T18:31:10.0012Z

Part of the idea behind topics in Freebase is that there should be only one topic for any given "thing". If a company just changes its name, it doesn't necessarily become a different entity, any more than when a person changes their name.

Business: New properties

2008-06-23T10:54:37.0000Z

I would rather that each different company name be a different topic.
The company type would have 'name changed from' and 'name changed to' properties.

Business: Industry parent/child vs. Industrial Classification parent/child

2007-11-19T14:34:22.0000Z

-- sorry for the double post - but I also realized how odd it is to have all the NACE, ISIC, etc. properties when the only one truly in use (i.e. has at least one object that uses it) is NAICS. Why are they there? Are there plans to add this data sometime?

Business: Industry parent/child vs. Industrial Classification parent/child

2007-11-19T08:13:36.0007Z

This issue struck me as strange as well. I think a merge would contribute to both types, since right now both of them are pretty sparse, whereas combining them might reach a critical mass of data.

Business: New properties

2007-10-22T18:54:56.0007Z

"Previous name" might do.

Business: Updated types

2007-10-22T15:31:18.0012Z

I refactored some of my recent changes. The type "Asset transfer" now points to "Asset owner", which is better than "Company".

Business: New properties

2007-10-22T15:29:11.0007Z

I can't use the descriptor "name" as it is reserved. What should I use instead?

Business: Industry parent/child vs. Industrial Classification parent/child

2007-10-22T12:37:05.0007Z

Glad you agree, jg -- do you think that a merge of Industry and Industrial Classification types might happen in the short- or longer-term?

Business: New properties

2007-10-18T20:43:02.0007Z

I think the property "new name" on the "company name change" type should just be "name". If you're entering previous names, the idea of entering a "new name" is somewhat confusing.

Business: New properties

2007-10-18T18:56:23.0005Z

I just added several new properties and helper types for Company:

Previous names -- holds previous names for companies with the dates they changed

Spin offs (Spun off from) --

Companies acquired (Acquired by)

Created from merger (Merged into) -- This one is a bit more complicated. Two or more companies merge on a particular date and can (but not always) create a new company

Assets sold (Assets acquired) -- A new type "Company asset" can be transferred between companies.

Business: Industry parent/child vs. Industrial Classification parent/child

2007-09-08T07:45:36.0007Z

I agree that the Industry type should be merged with the Industrial Classification type. I believe that Industry was derived from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Industries but Ill check on that....

Business: Industry parent/child vs. Industrial Classification parent/child

2007-09-06T21:15:41.0005Z

The two types, 'Industry' and 'Industrial Classification' each have (distinct) parent/child properties. Should they be merged?

I'm asking because I want to be able to query retail locations filtered by their geolocation (for instance a bounding box in South London defined by latitude and longitude values) and then tally the results by industrial classifications -- for instance, reporting on the total 'Taxi and Limousine Service' instances regardless of whether their finest grain of industrial classification is 'Taxi Service' or 'Limousine Service'. The 'Industrial Classification' type already has parent/child industries populated, but the 'Industry' type parent/child properties are less reliably populated. If they're the same, should they be merged? If not, how are they different?

Business: M&A....defunct company

2007-08-23T00:52:21.0005Z

How should an M&A event be recorded? (Sperry merges with Remington Rand and continues business as Sperry Rand.)

Also defunct company should probably have a ceased operations date property.

Business: wrong type for /business/employer/company?

2007-06-28T19:39:36.0007Z

The employer will typically also be typed as a corporation, a university, etc. Not all employers are businesses, so it seemed inappropriate to insist they be in Freebase.

Business: wrong type for /business/employer/company?

2007-06-28T19:28:17.0012Z

How can you determine the company a person worked for by examining their employment_tenure? /business/employement_tenure/company is type "/business/employer". /business/employer has a single property, "employees", of type "/business/employment_tenure".