Where in the world is Lawrence Kim?
This week, I wrote my column about a peculiar problem posed by Web 2.0: what happens when you can’t find somebody you know is online because there are so many other people who share their name? I had this exact dilemma when I tried to find an old high school and college friend of mine, Lawrence Kim. (He also goes by Chong Kim, which turns out to be an even more common name.) During an initial Google search, I discovered that a Lawrence Kim died in the Twin Towers, and that there are several Lawrence Kims who work in universities — for some reason, university home pages tend to get highly-ranked on Google, possibly because students are linking to class pages or because Google is OBSESSED with academia.
I also searched for my friend in Web 2.0-ville, via Technorati, LiveJournal, and MySpace. I tried (gasp) real-world contacts too, but the only person I know who also knew Chong lost touch with him years ago. So I decided to try the “push” method of searching and write about trying to find him, since the usual “pull” methods of search weren’t working. So far, no dice. Anybody know where to find the Chong/Lawrence Kim who went to Irvine High and UC San Diego? I’m pretty sure he’s some kind of engineer these days, since that’s what he studied in college. But he could be a music composer, for all I know. Maybe he’s joined the CIA or SD-6, and that’s why he’s disappeared!
I’m certainly not the first person to observe that information noise, even if searchable, is no better than a lack of information. And that’s precisely the stage we’re at now with searchability. Unless somebody is particularly well-published or well-referenced on the Web, their identity is drowned out.
October 10th, 2006 at 6:36 am
I’ve found that classmates.com is an effective tool in doing searches. first and foremost, they list people by both their maiden name and marital name. (the Maiden name/Married Name thing is a big barrier to googling married women). Second, you can actually contact other classmates from that year. They may not have been good friends with the individual, but chances are they know someone who did. Membership is free, and you can sign up for a trial premium membership (which allows you to browse through their bios) which you can cancel after 7 days.
October 10th, 2006 at 5:04 pm
I tried Alumni.net, which is the service my old high school uses, but I was very disappointed at how spammy it was — they pulled all these tricks and tried to get me to sign up for dating sites and a job posting site before letting me get access to their listings.