Here is a great story about how simple internet searches in the “age of Google” are reuniting people with past friends and family …

Two military buddies from two different countries were recently reunited after 50 years apart, thanks to the power that internet searching has given people to find one another.

Army officer Gene Kean was reunited with his friend Anh Vo, a former South Vietnamese army colonel, after 50 years apart and decades of searching.

Vo traveled to Lawrence Kansas on April 25 to meet with Kean after searching for him for decades.

“We are very happy,” Vo said. “I didn’t think I could find him, but I tried. I tried many times.”

The two military friends met in 1958 at the U.S. Army Engineer School in Fort Belvoir, VA, when Vo arrived in the US for training, after graduating from the Military Academy of Vietnam.

The friendship grew from that point on. Vo said he would practice his English with Kean. Kean taught him how to play football and played the piano for them. Kean even invited Vo and another officer to his home in Olathe to spend Christmas in Kansas.

When Vo graduated from the officers’ school in 1959, the two went their separate ways.

Vo’s son finally helped find Kean using free people search sites on the internet, and the two friends were finally reunited.

The two military buddies say their next reunion will be much sooner.

“We’ll try to keep meeting, if we have the chance to,” Vo said. “We don’t know how long we’ll be alive, so we’ll take time to enjoy it. We’re very close, very good friends. He’s a brother.”

Source: Kansas man reunited with friend after 50 years

An April 30 article in TechFlash confirmed that people search and public records data provider Intelius has purchased the free people search engine Spock.com for an undisclosed amount of money.

According to the article: Spock.com has burned through $8 million in capital and attracts about 10 million unique visitors each month to its free people search engine.

It will be interesting to see what Intelius has planned for the Spock.com people search service.

Source: Intelius Buys Spock.com

A new Google people search service allows users to track people, including friends and family from your cell phone or computer.

Google Latitude allows users to:

With Google Latitude, you can:

– Find where people are and what they are doing.
– Contact your tracked friends and family by SMS, instant messaging, or phone call.
– Control your personal location and which people get to track it.

You can use the Google Latitude people search service on your phone, PC, or both.

Check it out at Google Latitude People Tracker.

The free people search site YoName.com offers a person finder posting service for people looking to find and reconnect with past friends and family.

You simply enter your personal and contact information as well as the information about the person you are trying to find and YoName.com will create a posting with that information that can be indexed by the major search engines like Google.

If the person you are trying to find, or someone they know, comes across the posting in an internet search, they can then contact you through YoName.com.

The service assumes to some degree that the person you are searching for will Google themselves or will be Googled by a friend or family member and that your posting will be found. Depending on how common the person’s name is, this could be assuming quite a bit. However, the YoName.com free people search posting service is worth a try.

You can use the YoName people finder posting service at YoName.com.

Skipease.com has added the Pipl.com search to our Free People Search page, giving our visitors another great free search site for finding a person.

While some have described the Pipl.com search engine as “scary”, we think it is one of the most powerful new people searches on the web. The Pipl search can help you find a person as well as reverse lookup an email address, phone number or username.

Pipl.com is an amazing people search tool that searches numerous online resources like white pages, social networks and Deep Web databases to help you find a person faster than other online searches.

Some of the social networks and people search sites that the Pipl.com search engine crawls are myspace.com, facebook.com, online white pages, pdf documents, zabasearch.com, zoominfo.com, Google message boards, jigsaw.com, google people search, personal pages, as well as public records and government sites.

As Pipl.com adds other deep web data on people, the site will get even better.

You can try out the Pipl site @ Pipl.com.

This is a fascinating missing persons story.

A mother will be reunited with her missing son 42 years after he was kidnapped.

The mother recognized the missing son when he appeared on a TV show.

Dragica Olaj last saw her son Dragan when he was just six years old and playing outside their home before he was kidnapped.

Dragica recognized her sons three unique facial scars while watching a TV show about down and outs in Italy.

Now Dragica is awaiting DNA tests to confirm he is in fact her son Dragan.

Source: Mirror.co.uk

WE TV has announced their plans to renews Troy Dunn’s people search series The Locator for a second season.

The Locator’s second season is due to start in February 2009.

The hit people search series originally premiered on September 6 and was watched by more than 1.3 million people. The Locator stars professional people finder and investigator Troy Dunn. Troy Dunn has over 18 years of experience searching for and finding thousands of missing people and solving some of the most difficult missing persons cases.

Season 2 of The Locator will include 14 new episodes.

The 2nd season of The Locator will include episodes on an adopted girl seeking to meet her birth mother and sisters and a terminally ill mother wanting to reunite with her daughter. A team of people search professionals, including Troy’s mother Katie, helps Troy find the missing person and prepares both parties for the eventual reunion.

The Locator cases typically involve adoptees seeking biological parents, siblings separated at birth, unique situations where people have been separated from relatives or friends by a divorce, a move or tragic situations.

Troy uses his people search expertise and extensive search networks to help people looking for answers, closure and peace in their personal lives. At the end of every episode, there are discoveries for the people trying to find missing pieces of their past.

In his 18-year career, Troy Dunn has found thousands of people, reuniting them with relatives and friends in all fifty states and throughout numerous countries. Troy Dunn has successfully solved some of the toughest missing-persons cases.

For more information on The Locator TV series, visit We TV’s site at We TV The Locator.

Source: TheFutonCritic.com

PeopleJar.com will launch a free, user-created people search engine that allows people to search for and connect with other persons for social and professional purposes.

People Jar is set to launch its people finder service this month.

The People Jar site will be available in 14 languages. The web site will have numerous networking categories, including Arts & Culture, Entertainment, Fitness, Dating and Sports. There are currently 10 networks in the People Jar network, but the networks will expand as membership grows. PeopleJar.com users can suggest additional networks (and sub networks) that aren’t currently listed.

Alex Alexandrov, founder of PeopleJar.com, says he created the site to make it easy for people to search for each other online for free.

Before the creation of PeopleJar.com people who hoped to find other people online were limited to niche sites and paid networks in their search for dates, jobs, skilled employees or exercise partners.

Multiple-network people search networks typically required numerous paid memberships. However, PeopleJar.com, which also allows people to create user profiles with pictures, is different — their multi-purpose people search engine and social network allows people to connect with one another person using guided and custom searches. Users can also save each search for as long as they choose.

You can view a video demonstration of the this new social network and people search site at People Jar Welcome Video.

Source: MarketWatch.com.

Private investigator Troy Dunn is an expert at finding and reuniting people. WEtv will premiere a new reality show called “The Locator” on September 6 at 9/8c that follows Troy and his people search team as they search for and reunites people with past friends and family.

Tune in to watch Troy and his investigative team take on these difficult people searches, where creative tactics and some luck provide breakthroughs in their work to locate and reunite people.

You can watch a sneak peek of “The Locator” below.

To learn more about Troy Dunn and “The Locator” TV show, visit WEtv.com “The Locator”

A recent press release from Reunion.com reports that the free people search and reunion site has signed up a record 1.6 new people in the month of June. The increase in members brings the total of registered people on reunion.com to more than 40 million members, making reunion.com a large online tool for doing a successful people search.

Nearly all of the newly registered people on reunion.com came from within the United States.

Jeff Tinsley, founder of Reunion.com, stated that their ability to search over 260 million public records and over 40 million people profiles is helping to draw an increasing US audience of new users that want to find people they’ve lost contact with.

In addition, reunion.com moved into the Top 100 websites ranked by ComScore, with more unique visitors than LinkedIn.com, PeopleFinders, Intelius.com or Spock.com. Reunion.com was ranked as the 10th fastest growing website by ComScore in March 2008. Reunion.com was ranked as one of the Top 10 social networking websites by Nielson Online in March 2008.

Source: BusinessWire.com