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An Oasis in the People Searching Desert? Facebook to Provide Efficient Method for Finding People

“The sun is scorching and I am without water. I don’t know how long I have been out here and there seems to be no end in sight. When will I reach my destination? Will I even make it?” –A tale of woe from a lost traveler.

Sounds like the tale of some nomad wandering the desert, doesn’t it?

Sadly, the above paragraph is the story of People Search News editor Guy Dubleche trying to find his college roommate on his laptop in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. As Guy struggled through spammy web page after spammy web page, the 90 degree heat began to consume him and he had to go inside, grab an Evian and give up on his people search. If only he could have found a web site with some useful information, an oasis in the people searching desert if you will.

Let’s face facts, locating someone via the major search engines is an extremely time consuming and often fruitless process. First off, you are usually hit with bolded name results from hundreds of random web pages that you have never heard of. Will these sites be of any use in finding your search subject? Probably not. Secondly, you are bombarded with ads from paid people search services. Though they are effective, sometimes most of us want to save our money for a rainy day (or maybe some good Belgium beer). Finally, even when one wades through this seemingly unending pile of information, there is no way to be sure that we have even found our subject. There has to be a better way to search for free via Google, MSN, Yahoo and other major search engines.

Enter Facebook Public Listings Search.

Starting tonight, Facebook.com will launch a public listings search which will take Facebook profiles from the main pages of the popular social networking site to the results pages of major search engines. In about a month, people searches conducted on major search engines will be an entirely different animal as Facebook profiles will begin popping up all over search result pages. What does this mean to the online people searcher? More than he or she may realize.

With Facebook profiles showing up on search engine results pages, searchers will now have a user-friendly tool to help find their search subject. In place of cumbersome spam site and paid advertisement results will be simple links to real individuals which users can easily access. Once the user has found their subject’s Facebook profile, he or she can click on it to view a photo. From there if he recognizes the photo in the profile, the searcher knows he has found his search target. Finally, the searcher can simply register on the Facebook to contact the search subject. Finding someone really can be that simple.

According to Facebook, this new people search technology will make public only user profiles that are set to the privacy setting titled “Everyone.” Facebook is also giving it’s users the option of opting out of having their profile made public on search engines by changing their privacy setting.

So the next time you are struggling through the desert of online information as you try to find someone, look for the oasis— Facebook profiles. Don’t end up stranded, alone and without answers, like Guy.

Sep 05, 2007

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