Meta Genius

Contributors

July 12th, 2014

Introducing Genius.com

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Today we take a crucial step forward in the mission to annotate the world: Introducing Genius.com, the new home of this great knowledge project.

When we created Rap Genius 5 years ago, we had no plans to expand beyond rap lyrics. But the community had a bigger vision, and it wasn’t long before “Rap” Genius housed the collected works of Shakespeare and Jane Austen, the speeches of Abraham Lincoln, poetry by T.S. Eliot and Langston Hughes, TV and movie scripts, Chipotle’s menu, the back of a Tylenol bottle, the roster of the 1986 New York Mets, and that dream you keep having where your teeth fall out—all lovingly and carefully annotated.

In retrospect this was inevitable. Any text can be as layered, as allusive and cryptic, as worthy of careful exegesis as rap lyrics. Furthermore, it’s simply not possible to create a website that annotates rap alone, just as it’s not possible to create a website that annotates any individual slice of human culture—because no slice of human culture stands on its own.

Thus, starting today, “Genius” is the new name of the grand project, born from rap’s rib, to annotate the world—and of the platform and company we’re building to enable it.

“Genius” is the term you should add to your Google searches whenever you’re looking for deeper meaning and context. Genius is the verb you can use to describe looking something up on Genius or decoding something in general.

Genius is also a platform. Soon we’ll release tools that will allow anyone to make their website annotatable. Even today, you can add any text you want to Genius, annotate it here, and then embed it on your website.

The Internet contains multitudes. It is the greatest store of knowledge in human history. But so often we flit from page to page without ever diving in. We believe that an Internet that is Genius-powered will help us all realize the richness and depth in every line of text.

Rap Genius, founded by lovers, began as but a woeful ballad to Cam’ron’s eyebrow. But the intervening years have morphed us into soldiers, full of strange oaths, and that is how we stand before you today, ready to pursue our mission of global annotation with renewed vigor.

Much love,
Ilan & Tom, Genius Co-founders

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