Arc: People Search Service
April 2, 2012
We’ve found a new people search called Ark, designed to help you find people even if you don’t yet know their names. TechCrunch suggests, “Find Everyone You Can’t Google or Facebook with YC’s Ark People Search.”
Ark uses customized filters to supply lists of potential contacts. Writer Josh Constine explains:
Rather than first typing someone’s name, Ark gives you a selection of filters to whittle down the Web’s population. The options go way beyond the standard current city, hometown, employers, and education found on Facebook. There’s also gender, relationship status, and sexual preference to power dating searches; general interests and specific categories such as music and movies to find activity partners; and contact info search by email, phone, and first name to reconnect with people you’ve met.
Ark respects the privacy settings on its indexed networks and only presents public information. It also got approval from Facebook before delving into its data.
Founders Patrick Riley and Yiming Liu derived the concept after envisioning what Google and Facebook could create if they were inclined to work together. Since that is unlikely to happen anytime soon, Riley and Liu decided to step in and build on top of the framework the big wigs put together. The pair got their $250,000 seed money from Y Combinator, Yuri Milner, SV Angel, and Andreessen Horowitz.
Constine posits that, given the talent at Ark, Facebook may just wish to snap up the startup. Maybe, though it is too early to tell just yet.
Cynthia Murrell, April 2, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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