21 People Search

We discuss several different ways to find out information about people through their Web presence.

Class held on 11/17/2008. Student notes are available on this page. Possible questions are available on this page.

Class structure

1. Go through “At beginning of class” information
2. Go through diagram explaining the tools we'll be looking at today
3. Work on exercises

At beginning of class

At my request, we're going to have a visit from Nigel Melville to help explain his very exciting new class for BBAs that he's teaching next semester: BIT/MKT 378 “Service Innovation Management”. The following video relates to the MBA version of this class (which he taught last year).

1. Grades
   • I graded the tests.
     • Possible points: 108
     • Range: -3 to -64
     • Median: -11.5
     • At the end of class I'm handing them out; we'll go over them; you'll give them back to me before you leave this classroom.
   • To do
     • Projects (today was status check #3); next is last day of class
     • Blogs
2. The new building (as of Thursday) — it's really really sweet
3. The speaker from Google will be here next Monday.
4. Check the class notes page to see who is taking notes today.
5. Let's look over the upcoming industry updates.
   • For this class:
     • Google update: Kevin (schmidke)
   • Next class
     • Google update: Hernando (Hcflow)

My notes

Using Google to find people

1. Searching phone numbers (details)
   1. phonebook
   2. bphonebook
   3. rphonebook
2. Searching names
   1. "full name" location
   2. "full name" company
3. Can do the same thing at other general search engines: Yahoo, Ask, Cluuz

People search engines

1. Pipl
2. Wink (people search, phone number) Will not only look for the specified name but similar names (i.e. Ted Kennedy, Theodore Kennedy…)
3. 411 Locate (people search, reverse phone, reverse address, ZIP code lookup, area code, international calling codes)
4. ZabaSearch (advanced search, review)
   • Ages are wrong
5. Switchboard (White pages, Reverse phone lookup, Public records search)
6. WhoWhere (people search, phone lookup)
7. WhitePages (people search, find email, reverse phone, reverse address)
8. SuperPages (reverse phone, reverse address, area code, ZIP codes)
9. AnyWho (people search, reverse phone)
10. Yahoo People search (people search, reverse phone #, email search)
11. ZoomInfo (advanced search)
12. Spock (people search on the web, blogs, social networks)
13. iSearch (review)
14. 123people (people search) (review, review)
15. Yasni (review): people search
    • Uses a tag cloud customized to the person

Social site search

1. PeekYou (people search, username search)
2. YoName (people search, email search, reverse phone, social networks, blogs; "focuses on social media search looking through LinkedIn, FaceBook, Yahoo 360, Flickr, Friendster, MySpace")
3. LinkedIn (professional social networking search)
4. MySpace
5. Facebook
6. The Internet Address Book

Specialized

1. Military Search (veteran, current, military ancestors)
2. AMA's Doctor Finder
3. International
   1. InfoBel (search by country, six continents)
4. YourFamily (finding ancestors and lost relatives)
5. Family Search (online birth, marriage, death, census, church, and other indices; run by Mormon Church)
6. Birthday Database
7. Riya (image search for people, places, times, tags, descriptions) (advanced search)
8. FaceSaerch (yes, that's the right spelling!) — search for faces
9. Namepedia (review): the name database

Obituary search

1. Social Security Death Index (ancestery.com) (1875-current, US Social Security numbers)
2. Obituary Daily Times search
3. National Obituary Archive (obituaries, memorials, funeral homes)
4. Obituary Central (obituaries, cemetary searches)
5. NY Times Obituaries

Resources

1. Ten Ways you can find Phone Numbers on the Web (about.com)
2. Top Ten Ways to do a free people search on the Web (about.com)
3. Fifteen People Search Engines (about.com)
4. How to find someone online (about.com)
5. 4 people search engines: Looking for someone online
6. iSearch
   • Just the FAQ on People Search Engine iSearch
7. 123people searches the social web
   • 3-2-1 123people search launches off
8. Facesaerch: search for people's faces
9. Namepedia (review): the name database
10. Yasni (review): people search
11. Google, Yahoo, Ask, Cluuz