Google’s corporate mantra is, “Don’t be Evil.” Twitter jumped on the bandwagon in similar style with, “Be a Force for Good.”  Now PeekYou, a  people search company has decided to follow suit and incorporate their business with a slogan that partially defines their ideals. Just in case you’re not familiar with PeekYou, the company began its people search services in 2006 in stealth mode prior to offering it to the web surfing public in July 2007. The company’s name stems from the blending of two words, “people” and “seek.” While PeekYou’s not the original people search site, they’ve received  positive reviews by both TechCrunch and Mashable.

PeekYou allows its users to search for people by name, location, interests, online user names, and aliases.

The founder and CEO of PeekYou,  Michael Hussey, also created RateMyProfessor, a site purchased by MTV in 2007.  Hussey describes PeekYou as being “the ultimate reindexing of the web and a virtual people pages, spanning the entire web and assigning unique identities to individuals made up of everything from Social Networking pages, blog posts, news stories and known online aliases.” PeekYou competes directly with sites like Spokeo, Inetelius, and MyLfe.

PeekYou, like other online people directories, incorporates a mix of source information to compile the necessary data for their re-indexing effort. Sources include public URLs like MySpace profiles, Friendster, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, personal blogs, personal web pages, and news sources.

In a press release sent in late March, CEO Michael Hussey explained the methodology behind their company’s corporate statement: “We realize we are playing with some stiff competition and we don’t want to fall behind on the innovation curve. Hearing about all the Good things going on in our market space, we thought…you know…let’s just ‘Be Good for Goodness Sake.’”

As social media plays a larger role in our day-to-day lives, The Federal Trade Commission ( FTC) and other online regulating organizations are working independently, and in collaboration, to establish benchmarks for protecting user privacy. Goals include providing greater transparency, increasing  relevance, and contributing to a more personalized online web experience. Both consumers and advertisers will benefit from greater personalization and transparency, and several online providers, like Bizo and PeekYou, already offer specialized features, such as banner icons to allow users to opt-out of ads, and methods for users to exert more control over their online identities. This ensures that users, not online providers, will make the decision as to how, and how much, personal information is available on digital platforms. The current methods are haphazard at best, with application providers and social media sites enforcing different standards for privacy protection.

Some of the other slogans that PeekYou considered include:

• “Good to the Nth power”
• “Good/Evil – Can’t we all just get along?”
• “Good to the last drop” (I think I’ve heard this one…)

If you’d like to weigh in on the discussion, PeekYou will take user suggestions into consideration on  Twitter (@peekyou).

As for me, my submission is:  “Goodness takes effort; badness a lack thereof.”