PeekYou is not a people search engine, but rather an openly edited directory or white pages listing people’s online presence. The site lets you locate other Internet users with a presence on the web and access a list of all relevant links to the person being searched.

How does it work?

PeekYou is no central controlling force distributing information as it sees fit; rather it takes the open road. By placing control of the data in the hands of the volunteer community of contributors, they hope to encourage honesty, accountability, and ever improving search results.

You can sign up to edit your own personalized page and get a PeekYou profile that includes links to all information available about you. You are free to edit, add or remove information, links, photos, and tags (school, work, interests, etc.) associated with your profile or other PeekYou user’s profiles. If privacy is a concern, you can choose to be “unlisted”.

The information you find on PeekYou is already out there. By organizing that data PeekYou hopes to help the public become more aware of both the potential powers and liabilities associated with public knowledge.

PeekYou is created by Michael Hussey, founder of RateMyFace.com and RateMyTeachers.com/RateMyProfessors.com.

He says this about his latest brain child: “PeekYou is a true Web 2.0 ‘people search’ – we discover and map where people exist online, almost like writing a biography about your life on the net. In doing so, we are building the ideal engine for individuals to monitor their own online identity.”

Is it any good?

At the moment of writing there are 124,554,270 profiles on PeekYou. That seems like a lot, but most of my friends and relatives don’t have a profile. If PeekYou can’t find a profile, it doesn’t go online to suggest other sources of information, so for most searches, I’m left with zero results.

It was easy to register and set up my PeekYou profile.

The trouble started when I wanted to add a profile for a friend. PeekYou claims that anyone can add anew person to PeekYou. I tried, on two different occasions, weeks apart, and after submitting the information, all I got was a blank page and no new profile page.

Editing another persons links, tags or bio is easy, though. Perhaps too easy? Visiting Danny Sullivan’s profile, his bio had been spammed by a lady requesting that he contact her by email for a lovely friendship.

PeekYou is based on a sound concept, but there are still some bugs to be fixed and some kinks to be ironed out.