Our Mission

WikiWorldBook is a project to create the world’s first free global address book through the participation of the world’s online community. It aims to connect everyone on the planet through open mass collaboration, in much the same way as mass collaboration built Wikipedia. We believe that there is no greater creative force than people coming together positively for a single purpose.

• Search & find people on the web

• Be found by old friends & colleagues

• Search Alert - Find out when someone has Googled you (coming very soon)

• Manage your online reputation

• Communicate with others using our blogs, forum and groups

• Find info and reviews on Products & Services, Businesses & Organisations.

1. Search for People.

You can search for anyone using our People Search, for free and without being registered.

We provide highly focused results for people, so:-

• You can instantly see whether the people you are looking for might be popular networks like Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin, Blogger and many more.

• Using our filtered web results, you don’t have to wade through millions of search engine results to find people, because we have removed all the irrelevant results.

2. Be Found by Old Friends.

Be found on the web and be easily contactable, when you register.

We operate an open website, so that search engines can easily find you, and therefore your old friends and colleagues can easily find you, if they have lost touch. Depending on your privacy settings, you can either show your contact details or hide them, which means that people can send you messages without seeing your email address (ie a dead letter drop).

At the most basic level, all you might choose to show is your name, whilst your email address is hidden.

So, how this works in practice is that someone might search for you on Google. Your name on WikiWorldBook would be returned high up in the search results. When they click on our site, they are immediately presented with your profile. At the top of the page, there is a link allowing them to send you a message via our internal messaging system, even when they are not registered on the website.

Even better, our internal messaging system then automatically forwards on the message to your usual email address, so you don’t even have to regularly sign in to our site to check whether someone has contacted you.

Simple!

3. Search Alert – Find Out When You’ve Been Googled.

Every day, around 50 million people are Googled by people or organisations. Have you ever wondered if someone has been Googling you?

Well, wonder no more because, with Search Alert, now you can know.

This works in a very simple way:-

• When you register with us, you create a unique page with your profile on it (which might show as little as your name).

•  Because we are a “big” enough site, your profile page will be ranked high in any Google results – perhaps even number one – unless you have a very common name.

• Anyone looking for you will therefore easily see your WikiWorldBook profile page and want to view it.

• When they view that page, we capture some of their details, which allows you to see what time and what day they Googled you and where they Googled you from, which we plot on a Google Map.

• Every time you are Googled, we save these details in a report for you so you can keep track of how often it is happening to you. What’s more, you can choose if you want an email notification of every time it happens!

4. Manage Your Online Reputation.

Rather than people finding out about you from endless search engine results, show them what you want them to know in an easily found profile, which can contain as much or as little information as you like. WikiWorldBook will make your profile visible to search engines, like Google.

If you have a business you wish to advertise, you can select either a Business Profile, rather than a Personal Profile.

The site can also serve as an interface for all your Web 2.0 activities – for instance you can show people which other sites you are involved in (eg. Facebook, Linkedin or Myspace etc).

5. Search Our Site for Content

You can search our website for anything – interesting blogs, common interests, schools, any key words related to anything.

The website prides itself on being an open site - that means anyone can search the site in detail for people, their networks, interests and blogs etc without being registered.

6. Blogs, Forum & Groups

As well as being able to find people, we also provide you with simple tools to communicate with other people as well­:-

• Blog

You can start a blog and, because the site is an open site, it can be easily searched, found and read by the global community. You can also see how many times people have read each of your blogs

• Forum

You can post one off ideas or questions for discussion, for comment by other users.

• Group Talk

You can discuss things with other people in our groups for single interest based discussions

• Message Boards

Alternatively, you can share thoughts directly with friends on the message board on their profile pages. These are easily editable if you would like to change something… And if someone leaves a post, you can get a notification email.

• Profile Page

Apart from displaying your name and other information so that you can be found easily by friends, you can also:-

Show people which other social networking sites you belong to so they can find you there too, so this site can act as an interface for all the sites you use.

Share your interests with other people by registering them, so likeminded people can find you on a search (advanced). If you want, this list can remain hidden, so that someone searching for a particular interest will find you but no one will be given complete access to your list of interests.

Create a “network” with your friends by adding them to your friends list - which enables you to see, when you are looking at another user whether you share friends or how many people separate you. There is a theory that everyone on the planet is only 6 people removed from each other!

However, we are primarily an address book rather than a social network. We are also very different from traditional social networks because we are open which means:-

• Non-registered people can find you and send you a message without having to be registered themselves.

• When you search for people with WikiWorldBook, we find people on other networks or on the web (unlike traditional “walled garden” social networks, which confine you to their network).

7. Find or Give Reviews on Products & Services, Businesses and Organisations

The website also serves as a global address book for products and services, businesses and organisations:-

• Find listings, ratings and reviews in any of these categories. Where our listings directory has information gaps, it fills them by providing Google results for your search item.

• Create your own listings and give your own descriptions.

• Provide your own reviews and ratings – let others know of your good and bad experiences.

Creating Trust

We make a big thing about wanting people to trust us with their information, because without that trust we couldn’t grow our website. This is why:-

• We believe trust should be reciprocal – we believe that if you trust us with your information, you should be able to hold us to account. That is why we make it as easy for you to leave us as it is to register with us. Any time you want to delete your profile and the personal information you have registered with us, you can – in seconds. Just sign in, go to the Update Profile link at the top of your Profile page, and then find the “Delete Me” button at the bottom of the page. Simple.

• We don’t sell or pass any your personal information like your email address to any third parties. See our Privacy Policy.

• We have an open Suggestions Box at the bottom of every page, so if you want to bring anything to our attention, it’s shared with everyone.

Please let us know if you think we can improve our service in our Suggestions Box. We hope you enjoy our website.