Pipl.com is the Best Free Background Check Online, Another Blip on the Retro-Quant Radar
February 03 2009 / by Alvis Brigis / In association with Future Blogger.net
Category: Information Year: 2009 Rating: 6 Hot
Pipl.com is a new biographical search engine that actually works.
The secret? In addition to doing a good job with the search basics, Pipl also returns results from what it calls "the deep web", "a vast repository of underlying content, such as documents in online databases that general-purpose web crawlers cannot reach."
According to a study conducted by the Journal of Electronic Publishing, "public information on the deep Web is currently 400 to 550 times larger than the commonly defined World Wide Web."
A quick search on Pipl does indeed return results from this new search frontier, making the new product a truly useful tool. Just see for yourself.
This successful application of course prompts a whole set of questions about the future of seach, such as:
- How deep does the deep web really go? (Deep - quickly getting much deeper.)
- How fast will Pipl grow? (Fast.)
- Is Google working on similar projects. (Yes, and also expanding the deep web.)
- Who will buy it? (Microsoft, Yahoo.)
- Will Pipl change web culture by making personal data more accessible? (Yes. It's already the best free background check online and will make people nervous about their social network profiles and decade-OLD data.)
Pipl also serves as yet another indicator that the web-based retro-quant industry is experiencing a total BOOM thanks to a convergence of search, social media, structured data, production and input technologies.
Based on the sheer volume of data projected to go online over the next decade we can safely surmise that 1) we're just at the tip of the retro-quant iceberg and 2) Pipl appears to have situated a truly powerful growth niche. Definitely a company to watch in 2009.
