Some may think it a little ironic, but one of the most popular things to find on the content-rich Internet is people. Many people want to find an old flame or classmate, while others may need to check out a date, a prospective employee, or a new tenant. PeekYou is the latest engine to enter the people search arena. Today we’ll take a peek at what it offers.
PeekYou officially launched in beta in mid-July after having been in stealth mode since October 2006. The site claims to have profiles on more than 50 million people. One blogger did the math and figured that this came out to one in every 7,000 people. The numbers aren’t really that good (though they probably don’t need to be), as I’ll explain in a bit. It claims to be “the Internet’s first true openly edited white pages,” a claim that people search engine Spock might be able to dispute if it wasn’t still in private beta.
PeekYou lists an impressive number of features. It says that each person will have his or her own personalized page and a PeekYou profile that “will include bookmarked links to all information available about that targeted person.” PeekYou says that it can tie numerous online identities to a single individual based on tags and other resources. Users can edit, add or remove information, links, photos, and tags associated not only with their profile, but other PeekYou users’ profiles. Furthermore, individuals can choose to be “unlisted.”
PeekYou was created by RateMyFace.com and RateMyTeachers/RateMyProfessors.com founder Michael Hussey. He dreams of turning PeekYou into the ultimate open source online people directory. He sees working on a PeekYou profile as “almost like writing a biography about your life on the net” and PeekYou itself as eventually becoming “the ideal engine for individuals to monitor their own online identity.” If he can truly lick the problems inherent in people search, Hussey could get a real edge on his competition. Let’s take a look at the beta.
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