It’s interesting where the web will take you. You type in an address or use a bookmark to visit a favorite site—or maybe a job board, and before you know it you’re reading a blog post about something completely random. Amazingly, that random walk across the web is exactly how Google gathers all of its data for its search engine. They do this with something called a crawler, spider, or robot (all the same thing) that follows links from site to site and collects data. It’s all automated, so, unfortunately there isn’t a future job for you surfing the web all day. Obviously Google isn’t the only company that needs to crawl the web—more and more companies are realizing that there are many ways to profit by aggregating web data. Unfortunately, many of these companies don’t have the resources to build crawling platforms like Google has done. That’s where 80legs steps in, they’re a Houston, TX based startup that is making crawling accessible to the masses. For instance, I could use 80legs to find data on job or internship postings.

Do You Have the Legs?

80legs is still in its early stages, but they have funding and they’ve received some great press. What really makes them stand out, though, is how affordable they’ve been able to make crawling the web. They even have a free offering! I had no idea that crawling the web could be done so cheaply, and now that I do know, I’m trying to figure out if there’s any way that I can put their technology to use to help job seekers. We’ll see if that pans out, but for now you should check out jobs at 80legs. Right now they’re only offering remote contract positions for Software Developers, but it’s a great way to get a start at a company that could have a huge future effect on the Internet. 80legs has the potential to spawn some pretty cool features and even businesses.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

• 80legs.com
• Jobs at 80legs
• About 80legs
• 80legs’ Clients
• 80legs’ Blog

What do you think of 80legs?

We've identified 80legs as having career opportunities in the following categories:

• all employers
• information technology
• software development
• Texas
• web development

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