The Search For People
I’ve been really interested in people search lately, likely as a tangential wandering from my endless love/hate relationship with social networks. I’ve been talking about people search sites and my struggles with them, as well as the bigger ideas around being identifiable online here on my blog, but I’ve now tangentially wandered right off the site and started writing about people search elsewhere.
The September issue of Information Today magazine includes an article I wrote on using social networking sites for search (typically people search). Information Today is aimed at information professionals, notably librarians. I’ve got an article coming up in the October issue on using people search engines for research purposes. As it’s an honest-to-goodness print magazine, you have to either buy the magazine in an actual store or buy the article online to read these.
I also started a series on people search for Search Engine Land. And if you call in the next ten minutes, access to that is free all free! Heh. I’ll be profiling individual engines in the coming weeks, so watch for that if you’re interested in the new wave of stalking, um people searching.
well, with facebook and google, there’s not much left of your privacy. If you decided to expose yourself online, it’s not hard to find the info any more.
I think the good old people search are more to find real people that are not involved online.
I’ll go read the other articles thow =)
What I’m trying to understand is what is in it for the businesses who are creating this inventory (sorry, as an ad network owner, it’s all just a bunch of inventory to me). The economic value of product search on Google is that leads people to buy products.
I see the same problem with social networking sites that and digg and myspace have — all of the benefit goes to the users and those who receive traffic from the site. The ad inventory is virtually worthless.
Yup, Jon - totally see what you’re saying.
It’s definitely the case that people search results are more difficult to monetize than general search results. What’s a contextually relevant ad for a person’s name? You can find a few of us on ebay, but that really only works for celebrities and designers.
And in any case, some of these niche verticals seem like they couldn’t possibly get enough traffic to make a low-cost online advertising monetization model worthwhile.
There’s been some talk at RISKS-forum lately about not-so-social people search. Summary: if you buy a house, you probably need to get that house assessed by some tax agency, who thus knows your address. Some of those agencies helpfully put that information online because they’re supposed to–it’s part of the public records. Now everyone can find any home owner’s address for wacky fun impromptu visits.
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000287.html
Yay, tax: it’s like Facebook but without ACLs or RSS but more expensive.
“so watch for that if you’re interested in the new wave of stalking, um people searching”
Finally . . . I was about to stop stalking people but not now!!
With the improvement in people search I’ll be able to learn much more about the women I want to stalk before even leaving the house. This will not only save on personal injuries and gas expense (following people home is so expensive nowadays) but allow me to know additional background information on them so I can pose as a co-worker, old high school friend, or some other ‘trust worthy’ person.
The only thing better was when I worked for the NSA and I got to listen in on everyone’s phone conversations without them knowing. Women always look at me weird though when I was at the bar and asked about how their niece’s cat was doing after that terrible run in with the neighbor’s dog. Go figure, huh? lol
Your personal stalker, LOL
David Payne
P.S. Started using RSS finally. My iGoogle page is loaded full of cool stuff. You are my 3rd widget down on the left hand side (sorry, Matt Cutts rated higher). What an awesome way to easily know what is happening on specific sites and industries.
That was fun . . . but in all seriousness I have done some rather scary research to negotiate a good price on the house I am leasing.
I started here then went to here. From these two sites alone I was able to determine how much the owners paid for the home originally (I even quickly found the owner’s divorce documents which showed most of the home was paid for with her ex’s inheritance). Based off that number I realized that they had a very low monthly payment and thus I negotiated $200 off per month on the home (plus one month free during the 12 month lease).
This information is available for every home in the United States. Also, detailed records about divorces are available (I know I went through one).
Going through the public records alone will scare someone to death. Now compile all of it into one location and there will be some serious problems. At least with us 30 year olds and up. Perhaps the younger generations won’t care. We’ll see.
David Payne
smart! how do you feel about people piggybacking on your ingenious SEO trick?
I must say that more often than not, vanity takes over and I try finding myself online - but rarely succeed (er probably because I dont blog or write much).
But people search does throw up various questions in the air - for example, are employers allowed to research their employees and their comments/etc on social sites such as Face book? In the UK a well known university used facebook to gather evidence against students http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/18/noxford118.xml
With Facebook opening its arms to google to allow indexing of individuals profiles, are we getting closer to loss of privacy?