| People Search: Should You Invest In It? |
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| Written by Ricardo Balm |
| Thursday, 09 September 2010 20:32 |
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You may have heard it from the news...the people search industry profits are rising consistently. You have companies like Intelius who has clients who are in the Fortune 500-1000 category. That isn't a small deal. Various people use services like Intelius to look up long-lost friends, do a background check on somebody or find a specific type of public records. There are various reasons why people are looking for such information.
You may have heard it from the news...the people search industry profits are rising consistently. You have companies like Intelius who has clients who are in the Fortune 500-1000 category. That isn't a small deal. Various people use services like Intelius to look up long-lost friends, do a background check on somebody or find a specific type of public records. There are various reasons why people are looking for such information. Back in May, Intelius acquired US Search, one of the largest record search companies in the world (actually it was the 2nd largest website in terms of traffic after Intelius). Many people have referred to US Search as the godfather of people search companies mainly because they were founded back in the 1990s. The strange thing is there wasn't any mainstream media outlet that reported the acquisition. However, with the information I could find, one Intelius representative said that US Search is a very profitable company and that was one of the primary reasons why they decided to buy it. Now, the main competitor of Intelius and US Search (which are the same company basically) are PeopleFinders and WhitePages. PeopleFinders is also a very healthy business which grew from 9-10 to over 50 employees in 2009 alone. Whitepages is in the top 100 most visited websites in the world. They took quite a hit when Intelius acquired US Search because Whitepages was basically an 'affiliate' to US Search and (according to many people) a big percentage of their revenue came from there. After the acquisition, I now see that WhitePages partnered with PeopleFinders and offer their services as a 'premium' for the free people search results they have. Companies like Classmates and MyLife are great examples of the potential of the people search industry. Not very positive examples, though. These companies, in reality, are nothing more than smaller versions of Facebook. The trick is, they present themselves as a way to reconnect with friends/classmates via social networking. You'll have to pay to view the profiles of that 'someone' you're searching for. Compare that with Facebook, which has a large database of people all available to contact for free. Ultimately it's up to you to decide. There is a big, very big potential in this people search industry and someone needs to become aware of it and invest some money. DISCLAIMER: This article is provided as information only and is not to be taken as financial advice. This find people for free website is a great start to get informed if you have no idea about the people search industry. |