Tycoons Row

YoName, a California based company, started in 2007, is an alternative socialnetwork name search which allows you to be the stalker you wanted to be.  This online “name-search” tool allows you to look up people by a persons user name, their email address or even their first or last name. 

I tested out this service, and overall it will be a tough sell.  First, I noted that the search has no variation on the words if you enter in a name.  And given the fact that many users use “MySpace”, those variations will primarily come from MySpace.  I tried my first name, (Darrin) for the search & those variations of a single name, result in pulling not only just your home page of your MySpace profile, but also the page with where all your friends are as well as the video section of your MySpace page ( even if you don’t have any video).  The problem is that, all 3 of those variations for this type of service are not needed.

I’m pretty sure that this is still in Beta stage or maybe even in Alpha as the search is limited to only MySpace, Xanga, Digg, Match,  Friendster, and Facebook.  I’m pretty sure that more will be added so that more search indexing will be more useful, however, the main problem with all this is that many people use different user names for different accounts.  Also, the beginning MySpacers never used their real personal name on their pages, let alone their first or last.  The company states the following:

OK. Let’s say you’re at the club and you’re flirting with this total stud (and he is way out of your league, by the way), and, boom, you score digits. The problem is, genius, that the next day they’re still in the pocket when you toss your jeans in the wash. You remember his name, but he’s not in the book. I mean, who even uses the book anymore except to order pizza? Exactly. So now what do you do? yoName!

Yeah, this is only about the company & provides you an understanding of how to use it, however, the fact is that I think the majority of people don’t use their MySpace names when they go to the club, or give out BetsyLuv38275. 

Overall, the first community search that yoNmae should have added was LinkedIn.  This would have been a better use of their search indexing feature.  This community, which is more professional in nature, more users will want to use their first & last names & a true contact email.  Users of this community have been known to use this service in networking for jobs & gain direct contacts by name. 

Mainly, this service will have a hard time taking off, unless they add additional features such as indexing from different communities, or adding a function to look up phone numbers, or home addresses.  Then, and truly then can yoName can let you become the private detective or stalker in some cases, that you want to be. 

I think to be an effective search engine, there are a few things that you may want or need to have: 

 Allows or accepts any & all history of information 

• Allows you to filter on the content you are looking for 
• Relavancy:  Returns what you are specifically looking for 
• Allows you to narrow down, ranking & categorize your findings 
• Saves you time, allowing you to find what you want & need effectively 
• Allow you to search on specific types of online media: ie pictures, words, audio, or video