Yesterday at the Washington Technology Industry Association event here in Seattle, we announced that Blist is now Socrata. We’re Making Data Social. Our new name is derived from the words “social” and “data” and we hope it evokes a certain Greek philosopher who introduced the world to a new method of inquiry called the Socratic method. Socrata is a different kind of software service not like one any of us have seen before. We’re calling it “social data discovery” which is the process of unlocking, transforming and rendering data in ways that are interactive, social and accessible to audiences previously excluded from exploring data and interacting with each other around data.

We also launched the entirely new Socrata.com site. It’s a social network for people who love data. Socrata.com is where you want to go to find public data and/or to create new datasets to share with colleagues, friends or the public. You can comment, rate and discuss public data. You can publish your own or any public dataset. Spend some time on Socrata.com and let us know what you think.

More details to come soon.