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What do you get when you toss the appeal of Facebook and the functionality of Google in a blender and set it on high? PeekYou.
PeekYou is a new search engine designed to find people. While this falls into a class of run of the mill “new” search engines, this one actually has some interest and I think it might have some legs in terms of gaining some real adoption.
The front page which is where search engine users spend a good chunk of their time, so it’s important to make a good impression. Clearly PeekYou is in the branding phase of their business model. If you have any doubts, measure the amount of screen real estate dedicated to their logo. That makes a lot of sense for the time being because they want to establish themselves and their brand is what they need to etch into people’s minds. Aside from the major branding move, the layout’s pretty straightforward. They have a bunch of options to search, first/last name and username. They’ve lined them up in a clearly identifiable box and anyone who hasn’t used the system before will know what to do.
So how does it work? I tossed my name in there and was pretty impressed with the results. It actually found a few places that I have a presence that I had forgotten about. It did a great job finding me 
But what about someone else, someone who may not have invested as much into their web presence.
I ran a few other searches for some people who I knew are online. I got some mixed results. It seems that they tend to lean on the more of the social networking sites. While they do have some information on other sites, like my blog, they weren’t able to identify John Chow. John’s a pretty well known name through the blogosphere, but they only have two records for John Chow in Canada, neither one is the man himself. But, they have found a bunch of other people I know so while they do have some way to go, they have a pretty solid base to start from.
If you’re one of those who can’t be found, but think you should, you can add yourself. I do have people searching for my name on a reasonably regular basis so I’m curious to see what will happen once PeekYou starts to get more and more users. So far, I’ve had two referrals
So with PeekYou you get the fun of finding people just like with Facebook but you can do it with the ease and relative anonymity of Google. With employers looking to the web for information on potential hires, this technology is likely to grow fast.
If you want some more details on PeekYou, go have a look at their press release.
PeekYou, search engine
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