For the third installment of my re-visiting of "web2.0" sites I signed up for but never bothered to use much more than a day, we take on the concept of "people search". Unlike a few other new things, I was immediately skeptical of this concept. I mean, what the hell does "people search" mean, anyhow, and exactly who thinks they can beat Google at the search game? Not that Google is unbeatable, mind you. But I wouldn't exactly call it difficult to find out something about someone online using their search box.
Still, others have tried. Whether or not they've failed, I leave to you:
Wink
I'm guessing this is an aggregation site of all the various places I post stuff, where the idea is to kick out a "life stream" of me. Maybe. Hell if I remember. That's what it shows about me, but damned if I know what that has to do with anyone anywhere finding me.
Gleamd
Here's a site I never got, not from the beginning. It looked like some sort of popularity engine, but I could never figure out what it was trying to be. Biggest failing: anyone can set up a profile on anyone, and normalizing the data is a nightmare. No, not a nightmare, just impossible.
If there's positive applications to these two, let me know. Profiles are still there. Maybe I'm slow and it will eventually set in.
I actually use Wink on occasion, and I even searched for you there when I first tried it out.
ReplyDeleteMy understanding is that Wink lets you search for "John Smith" and you get a list of "John Smith"s, each one should be a different person. When you click on a specific "John Smith" you get a bunch of hits that should all be the same "John Smith". Or at least that's how it used to work. Looking at it now, it does seem to be a rather crappy "Life Stream" view by default (I ended up writing my own one of those). The "Places" tab is what I was talking about.
It's good for tying stuff together, sort of. Probably not so useful for "Evo Terra". I'm pretty sure when I see that name who it is. "Jason Penney" on the other hand is not always me.