After the announement of Sarah Palin as the McCains running-mate in last years Presidential election the American media took no time in finding and publicising her pregnant daughters’ boyfriends myspace page.
Google isnt the only possibility for search; niche search engines out such as Socialmention, Pipl and Wink have access to a large amount of data and can even surpass the omnipresent Google when it comes to searching for people.
Social Mention
Social Mention
Social mention searches social networks api’s and feeds to bring up-to-the minute results from the social web.
While the results are interesting they are unfiltered so you might be a while searching through the results to find what you are looking for.
Pipl.com
Pipl.com
Pipl is the most powerful of these search engines; the site claims to search the deep web and certainly seems to.
The site is designed to allow you to search by name, username, location and email address.
Pipl.com’s results are well categorised and it is amazing to see the amount of information it can access.
Wink.com
Wink.com
Wink is more basic then Pipl but it does contain a seemingly large cache of pages along with its index.
It would seem that looking at other search engines for niche content is like the old journalists’ trick of never throwing away an old phone book.
