The Oxford Knowledge Company

This month's article will deal with how to find contact details for people you already know, people you would like to know and finally, how to dig around and research someone's background.

Many years ago in the Unix-heavy early days of the Internet, when Web browsers had just started to become available, a college professor with whom I used to correspond in a chat room and I challenged each other to find each other's email address. We each gave two clues: our first name and our (broadly stated) place of work. This was in the days before routine use of firstname.lastname@myplaceofwork.com as an email address, when your email address was more likely to be something like initials@servername.college.edu.

I was totally spooked when one afternoon later he replied to my personal email address with full knowledge of who I was, exactly where I worked, my work phone number and the titles of some of my scientific publications!

My own efforts were much less successful - I tried to be too clever, relying on hacker-type methods and missed out on the main clues he gave me - his name, and the fact that he was an astronomy professor at a certain university. In fact, his department was so far ahead of its time that it already had a Web site, on which he was duly listed as a faculty member.

The same exercise nowadays would be comparatively trivial, simply because many organizations kindly oblige by listing staff contact details, or at least providing some form to fill in for those seeking to contact someone in the organization.

And the best way to find the email address of a friend is still to phone them and ask! If you don't know their phone number there are a number of services that may help. For example, using the Internet to find old friends has become very popular. Services such as FriendsReunited (http://www.friendsreunited.co.uk) help those educated in the UK to find old school and college friends: for the US you can find a list of Alumni Directories at http://directory.google.com/Top/Reference/Education/Alumni_Directories/

You could also try services like BigFoot (http://www.bigfoot.com), Infospace (http://www.infospace.com), and EmailFinder (http://www.emailfinder.com). Don't expect comprehensiveness, however, these directories are incomplete; you may be lucky, or not.

As for finding contact details for people you don't know; the Internet has rapidly become the best tool for doing this.

There are several reasons why you may want to do this:

1. You need a date
2. You need an employee
3. You need advice
4. You need a customer (finding a sales lead)

Finding people is clearly so important that several e-business models are based on providing just this service.

The first, we'll leave out - but be assured that dating services on the Internet do brisk business!

The second - recruiting an employee, is taken care of by the many recruitment sites on the Web - InPharm's Career Centre being a prime example! You could also go directly to the source - some enterprising prospective employees actually put their CVs on their own personal Web sites. (Arguably, if you are looking to recruit someone to work in any aspect of e-business, you should regard such a move as a crucial test of their ability to knock up a basic Web site and get it promoted within the search engines!). To find CVs listed openly, search for the keywords that describe the skills you require along with 'cv' and 'resume'.

The third you can address on so-called 'expert' sites, as detailed by my previous article "Get ready for e-knowledge" (Feb 2001).

The fourth is an important part of any business-to-business operation. There are a number of ways of using the Web to find customers; here are some:

1. Buying direct mailing lists

You can buy direct mailing lists piecemeal over the Web, configuring the list as you go so that you only buy what you can afford, or else a really targeted list. This service is available from (amongst many others) Dun and Bradstreet Small Business Solutions (http://www.dbd.com/smallbusiness/) MarketingFile (http://www.marketingfile.com).

In fact Google's Web Directory has an entire category devoted to listing such providers of sales leads in the form of direct mailing lists (http://directory.google.com/Top/Business/Marketing/Direct_Marketing/Mailing_Lists/)

2. Buying bulk email mailing lists

You can tell from the dozens of emails you probably receive every week, that bulk emailing is alive and well. I've never met anyone who doesn't claim to simply delete these without reading, yet the technique must produce some results or (one assumes) businesses would simply stop using them. It must depend on the nature of the product being sold. Google Web Directory's list of direct mailing lists includes some bulk email list vendors.

3. Using software to 'grab' emails from Web sites and compile your own mailing lists

Beat the email list grabbers at their own game by using the same software. You can buy versions of such software relatively cheaply, although it isn't for the technically bewildered. The programs will search through Web sites for email addresses and compile bulk email lists based on the findings. Search for these programs with the following keywords: email search software

4. Looking through conference and exhibitions abstracts for names of attendees

Time consuming but potentially very targeted; this strategy relies on your having some knowledge of the major conference events in your industry. If your industry has a community Web site (such as InPharm.com), then you will be able to find several key industry events listed. Looking at the Web sites of the conferences can be a great way to pick up the names of some useful contacts.

Next month…finding information in the files formats other than HTML...