Academia.edu Funded By Howzat, Others: A Family Tree For Researchers

imageSan Francisco-based Academia.edu, kind of like a social family tree directory for teachers and professors, has received an unknown amount of funding from UK startup investor Howzat Media, Spark and individual entrepreneurs – the investment was made some time ago but Howzat only spoke about it today. Academia.edu tries to display academic profiles from around the world in a tree format – trying to do genealogy for teachers may sound a fruitless endeavor, but having worked on web ventures with some of them myself, academics can be precious about getting their org chart just right; a network that lets tutors add profiles containing their papers and so on may prove more popular with researchers, who tend to move between institutions, than their own colleges’ websites. The site counts Richard Price, a fellow of Oxford University’s All Souls College, as its CEO; here’s his own profile on the site. This is Howzat’s second niche social net investment after it earlier led a $980,000 round for travel net WAYN.