Peeking at PeekYou`s People Search - Signing Up
(Page 4 of 4 )
I knew there had to be more functionality to the search engine if I signed up. First, I wanted to check the FAQ. I was glad to see PeekYou using Ajax; click on a question and the answer neatly slides down under it. I discovered that it is possible for registered users to have their IP address blocked if the search engine’s spam filters determine that their IP address is sending spam, in which case they can’t do certain things with the search engine. I also discovered that cities only get added when people who actually hail from that city have profiles listed in PeekYou (which makes a certain amount of sense).
Registration is easy; it’s worth keeping in mind, though, that it doesn’t create a PeekYou profile (as the search engine itself explicitly points out). Registering an account lets you message other members, track your additions and edits to PeekYou, and create a watch list so you can follow changes to your favorite profiles. The form asks for your user name, password, first name, last name, and email address, as well as your location. The verification email arrived instantly.
After clicking on the verification link in the email, I arrived at the PeekYou web site, where I logged in. After logging in I came to a page with separate sections for my contributions, my preferences, my inbox, and my watch list. And I was able to add a “star trek” tag to William Shatner’s profile. It wasn’t instantly recorded as a “contribution,” however.
Naturally I wanted more; I wanted to contribute my own profile. So I clicked on the “add profile” link near the top left on the home page. It took me to the following form, which I’ve already started filling in:
As you can see from the drop-down, I can add a variety of different types of links. Well, okay, let’s see if we can’t round this profile out a little bit. I’m a little photo shy when it comes to these reviews, but many PeekYou profiles didn’t have images. Links are a different story. Making sure I was logged out first, I found myself on Searchles and included a link. Then I wanted to include another link, for LinkedIn; unfortunately, I couldn’t get signed out of LinkedIn (the browser was taking forever). That’s when I encountered another PeekYou bug; despite the second link being totally blank, PeekYou insisted that I fill it in before adding the profile, and did not show any way to get rid of the “blank” link. I finally resorted to including a link to one of my SEO Chat articles and listing it as “Others.”
After adding a couple of tags, here is my PeekYou profile:
PeekYou now finds 13 entries with the name Terri Wells, with my as the lucky thirteenth. I wanted to add this new profile to my watch list, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it. There was a link to an RSS feed for the profile, but that didn’t seem to do what I wanted. I didn’t want to receive email every time the profile changed; I just wanted to receive something in my onsite inbox when it changed.
So, what is my analysis of PeekYou? The company has some serious bugs to work out. The interface works fairly well, except for some infuriating issues which I already mentioned. It definitely has not solved the problem of making sure that its profiles are of real people, and it seems to have been slow to get everyone important. I do like its use of Ajax, and it does seem to be working on potential spam problems. Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by what I saw when I reviewed Spock, but PeekYou seems not to be nearly as far along as Spock – and Spock is still in private beta. In short, I don’t think this is the people search engine we’ve been looking for.
| DISCLAIMER: The content provided in this article is not warranted or guaranteed by Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation of best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that may result from implementing any information covered in our articles or tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open and/or modify your hardware. |
