Web 3.0 Indexing: PlaceID and PeopleID

I wrote last week, that we need to include Place in the Web 3.0 formula, and this week Cal McElroy introduced the concept of PlaceID, a unique identifier which enables all content on the web to be indexed by Place.

As I was thinking through this, and exchanging emails will Cal, we also felt that a similar indexing scheme is necessary for People search.

Ofcourse, People search has become a bit of an industry with search engines like Spock. So let’s start there.

Do a search on Philip Roth. You’ll see, that the first entry and the tenth entry, both refer to a 74 year old writer in New York. Are these two the same person? How can you know?

The answer is, you can only know, if a unique PeopleID existed, that can index the web by people.

Yes, the exact same concept as what Cal has been talking about in terms of indexing the web by Place.

Yes, we need both types of indexing.

If, for example, there are fifteen Philip Roth’s on LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, and Plaxo, how do we establish the intersections? Perhaps by email addresses, which Plaxo attempts. But LinkedIn and others are not supposed to give out our email ids, so how do you reconcile?

No, we need a unique PeopleID as well.

As far as I can tell, anyway!