NEW YORK, NEW YORK--(Marketwire - Oct. 28, 2008) -

Editors Note: A photo is available with this press release.

Today next generation people search tool, 123people (http://www.123people.com) hits the web with its US public beta launch. 123people is a high performance people search functionality that finds and identifies people's information from publicly available sources across the web.

123people is also socially interactive, applying crowd wisdom to search results. Users can rate and add information to every single search result, giving it more relevance with details that are not yet found on the Internet, taking the quality of people search to the next level. An "Update Newsletter Service" provides users information about new search results on the Internet.

123people outperforms existing search sites by:

- Using an innovative search function that finds peoples' contact details, images, videos, web links, biographies, news, blogs, documents and social network profiles from hundreds of international and social media sources

- Organizing the relevant information in a dynamic hub where users can find the most up-to-date information on anyone.

"We are out to change the way Web users search and discover people information," says Russell Perry, CEO of 123people.com. "Some years ago people used the telephone book to find peoples' information. But today it is not only about addresses and telephone numbers - it is about videos, photos, email-addresses, blogs and much more. 123people.com brings superior search results because our search is optimized, and gets better every day, because we take strong efforts to include locally relevant sources like white pages, Zoominfo and news outlets, such as CNN, NY Times, and WSJ as well as other web 2.0 offerings for the next generation of people search."

What makes 123people different?

The site is designed to fundamentally improve the quality of people search on the Web. In addition to aggregating people information from globally accessible databases and social networks on the Web. 123people.com also search country-specific Web sites, providing fast access comprehensive results.

People search is one of the fastest growing interests of Web users. According to a recent Technorati study, approximately 30 percent of search queries conducted in traditional search engines like Google are people-related. However, the search results in these major engines are often overwhelmingly buried in pages of unrelated results and can be frustratingly incomprehensive. Niche search sites give users a faster, more effective, and direct way of locating specific information.

123people Features:

- 123people aggregates people-related data

- User can tag search results and give them more relevance

- Includes popular social media profiles (e.g. Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Xing, Friendster, HiFive, FlickR, Bebo, Bloglines, Blogger, Zoominfo, LastFM)

- Instant Messenger profiles and Microblogs, such as, AIM and twitter

- Tagclouds

- Biographies

- Phone numbers, addresses and emails

- News page results from CNN, NY Times, WSJ and USA today.

- 123people is available in English and German and soon in Spanish and French.

About 123people

123people (www.123people.com) serves up the preeminent experience in finding "everyone you (want to) know" by crawling and aggregating people information from hundreds of international sites on the web. Launched in 2007 by European-based Web 2.0 incubator i5invest, 123 People offers the next generation of people search.

About i5invest

European-based Web 2.0 incubator, i5invest (www.i5invest.com) works to help European startups grow and acquire venture capital funding in the US. With a network extending from Vienna, Austria to Silicon Valley.

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