Spokeo Blog | Find People through People Search

We just got on the MSN front page couple hours ago.  As expected, hundred of thousands of people are flocking to Spokeo right now, and the incoming traffic is beyond our imagination.  The site has ground to a halt, and even we administrators cannot access it at the moment.  We don’t have a solution for this because we cannot stop people from coming to the site, and buying ten more servers today will not help our immediate needs.  As a result, we will just have to wait it out until the traffic subsides to a more reasonable level.

We are sorry about this service disruption to our existing users.  We’ve always planned to have 50% more capacity available to handle unexpected traffic spikes, and due to our planning, we have been able to weather through all the PCWorld, Wall Street Journal, Sina, and other mainstream press around the world.  However, getting on the third largest website in the world (msn.com) is a little bit too much for us to handle today.

Welcome to the world of Harrison! I love traveling; in fact, I like it so much that I’ve posted maps from different parts of the world in my room. Sadly, I don’t have the money and the time to visit places, so I read people’s travel blogs as some kind of consolation. There are thousands of amazing photographers and bloggers sharing their stories online, and I follow them on Spokeo.

TravelBlog.org (add http://www.travelblog.org/rss/latest.xml into Spokeo): TravelBlog.org is a collection of people’s travel stories from all around the world. It’s probably the biggest travel website out there.

The Travels of Stacy (add http://travelsofstacey.blogspot.com/ into Spokeo): Stacy likes to travel; unlike me, she actually has been to places, and she diligently records her experiences. She has even visited Myanmar (the country that saw the Buddhist Monk’s Revolution last month), and that is just exotic and awesome.

Flickr Photo Tags (add http://flickr.com/photos/tags/[tag name like Kazakhstan]/ into Spokeo): Flickr is the best online photo album in my opinion. When I am bored, I would just browse around beautiful and cool pictures from Flickr. Here is one of the little tricks to maximize your Flickr experience with Spokeo. If you are interesting in Kazakhstan (Borat’s birthplace) like me, simply append the tag "Kazakhstan" behind "http://flickr.com/photos/tags/". Likewise, if you want to see … say German castles on the Rhine, simply append the tag "german+castle".

Danielzolli’s Flickr (add http://flickr.com/photos/danielzolli/ into Spokeo): I found out about Danielzolli after browsing around for photos from Kazakhstan for a while (after watching the movie "Borat", I got this inexplicable urge to find out everything about Kazakhstan). Danielzolli is an adventurer/photographer who has traveled around the World, from Southern America to Europe, from the Middle East to the Central Asia. You should definitely check out his photos.

There are countless other photographers out there, not just on Flickr, but also on Webshots, Zooomr, and Photobucket. Spokeo supports all these services, so now you can easily follow your favorite photographers’ works

The two days off are welcome after a week of hard work and I feel they should be packed with activity. How do I decide what to do? I track a few popular sites on Spokeo to see what is happening in my neighborhood and also the places I travel to frequently. I thought I would share them with you. I recommend grouping the sites together using the “New Group” option in the Add Friends screen drop down list, add a category called Events.

1. Upcoming.org

(copy and paste this URL http://upcoming.yahoo.com/syndicate/v2/search_all/?loc=Atlanta%2C+Georgia%2C+United+States&rt=1  into the Add Friends screen) Upcoming tracks events from all over the country (this example is from Atlanta). This site is one of my favorites because I can track conferences, concerts or gallery openings. Upcoming has an event for everyone. In the “Find Events” box type in the name of the city you spend your free time in. Once the events show up click on the RSS button and copy and paste the URL.

2. Meetup.com

(copy and paste this URL http://www.meetup.com/cities/us/ca/san_francisco/events/ into the Add Friends screen). Meetup.com is a site I use to find “things to do” closer to home. This example is a list of events that are happening in San Francisco this week. Meetups can be organized by anyone, and each organizer sets the rules for attending their event. Select the Tab Meetups by City. Then click on the “This Week” tab to see what is happening in your neighborhood.

The next three examples are from college campuses. Colleges are a great place to find out what’s happening in your community. Often these events are free and easy to get to via public transportation. I’ve listed three examples here. Do a search on your Alma Mater and see what’s happening this weekend. Adopt a school if you’ve moved away since graduation.

3. University of Southern California(copy and paste http://web-app.usc.edu/ws/ec2/rss/32/list into the Add Friends screen).

4. Stanford University

(copy and paste http://events3.stanford.edu/xml/rss.xml into the Add Friends screen).

5.San Jose State University

(copy and paste http://rss.sjsu.edu/channels/sjsu-events.xml into the Add Friends screen)

I hope you have a great weekend.

If you don’t have friends on AIM, obviously AIM is useless to you. Likewise, Spokeo is not very useful if you don’t know what to track. Since I track more than 500 blogs (this is why I got to use Spokeo everyday), I started recommending some cool blogs last week. This week, I would like to share some gossip blogs with you:

1. Perez Hilton (copy & paste "http://www.perezhilton.com" into "Add Friends" screen): This is probably the most popular celebrity blog on the Web right now. It got all the latest scoops and gossips of Hollywood stars, much sooner than mainstream news sites like Yahoo News or CNN. On the side note, I don’t know why the site is called Perez Hilton, but it sure is a memorable name.

2. Gawker (copy & paste "http://gawker.com" into Spokeo): This blog talks about gossips and news in Manhattan. I actually don’t track this blog in Spokeo, but I know it’s one of the biggest blogs out there.

3. ValleyWag (copy & paste "http://www.valleywag.com" into Spokeo): Now this is a gossip blog by and for geeks. It talks about the lives and secrets of Internet startups, their Founders, and other Internet celebrities. Although engineers might not look as cool as Paris Hilton, their insider stories are just as intriguing and entertaining.

4. World of Celebrities (copy & paste "http://worldcelebs.blogspot.com" into Spokeo): Pictures worth thousand words. A lot of times, I am not interested in reading celebrities’ stories. Rather, I just want to see their stupid or cool pictures. This blog posts about 5 sets of celebrity pictures everyday, so you’ll be constantly entertained.

5. Dreams of Asia (copy & paste "http://dreams-of-asia.blogspot.com" into Spokeo): This blog posts photos of upcoming models in Asia. If you are into Asian styles, or if you are tired of Hollywood stars, this blog is for you.

Do you know any other celebrity blog that you would like to recommend to the Spokeo community?

I track in excess of 500 friends and blogs on Spokeo, so literally every minute, I got something new to read. Here I’d like to share what’s on my reading list:

Flickrbabes (copy and paste "www.flickrbabes.com" into your Add Buddy screen): I am a single guy who just passed 25, so I guess it’s still okay to look at pictures of cute girls. The Flickrbabes author has a good sense of aesthetics, and the blog contains no obscenity. I think both guys and girls would appreciate his photography.

Autoblog (copy and paste "www.autoblog.com" into your Add Buddy screen): I love cars! Although I drive a 14-year-old Honda and have no money to buy a new one, I still enjoy dreaming about owning a cool car. Autoblog always gets the first winds and spy shots of every upcoming car, and they write about 10 times a day. If you like cars, you got to add Autoblog into Spokeo. Also, you might be interested in thetruthaboutcars.com, too. It makes fun of bad cars and car companies in general, and its sarcasm is entertaining sometimes.

My Sister’s Combined Account: My sister blogs about her travel experiences on andrea-travelhighlights.blogspot.com. She also favorites cool videos on Youtube sometimes. Spokeo becomes a very useful and non-intrusive tool for me to keep updated with her (No annoying features that allow people to comment and message each other. We use AIM for that.) She just needs to link all of her accounts together, and adding her blog will allow me to track her other accounts on the Web.

Google Search on Spokeo: This is one cool feature that many people don’t know about. You can go to blogsearch.google.com (or other search engines). Search "Spokeo" or any keyword. Copy and paste the URL of the search results into Spokeo. Then Spokeo will track the latest search results for you. This is how I keep track of what people are talking about us on the Web.

Techcrunch(copy and paste "www.techcrunch.com" into your Add Buddy screen): You might have heard of this blog, since Techcrunch has become the default textbook for the Web 2.0 crowd. It talks about the latest web technologies, and many Internet startups (including us) make their debuts there. Even if you are not into technologies, Techcrunch is still an interested blog to read.

Engadget (copy and paste "www.engadget.com" into your Add Buddy screen): If you like cool gadgets, Engadget introduces about 3 new gadgets to you everyday. Even if you are not into technology, looking at pictures of cool gadgets is pretty entertaining and relaxing (maybe just me?)

What’s on your reading list? If you don’t mind, share them in the comments!