TechCrunch broke the news recently that Pipl.com has taken over the top position in the people search niche in the U.S. - though Spock still leads that market globally.

Roi Carthy at TechCrunch calls the new Pipl.com scary.

It produces not only links to all of your profiles on social networks like Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn, blog mentions, and photos on Flickr. It finds mentions of your name in public records, including property records, SEC filings, and birth databases. It also finds e-mail addresses and summarizes "quick facts" about the person.

What does that mean? I found an email address on one of my daughters (I already had it.) I found my little sister's address, phone number, birthday and age, and her husband's name (all of which I already knew).

The I searched my own name. Huge pile of stuff.

I didn't see any social security numbers, credit info, etc. in the free searches. It would be interesting to see what comes back on the paid search. Pipl searches the web itself instead of just databases. You get public documents that are online - a potential for criminal records, professional licenses, deeds, etc. It's still not great for "John Smith" (I have a friend by that name). But if your looking for someone with a name with a little less commonality, the potential is great.


Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Image# 8157317