Ever wonder how popular you are on the Web &8212' and how you stack up to others

People search company PeekYou has developed a program that lets you track how your online persona ranks relative to others&' on the Internet.

It released data this week that showed that using its PeekScores data, the top five college dropouts with the highest web presence were Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Dell and Richard Branson.

The company&'s PeekScores service, launched this summer, now indexes people with their public web URLs, then takes into account a user&'s known presence and activity on the Internet.

This includes, but is not limited to, someone&'s blogging, their participation in social networks, the number of friends, followers, or readers, the amount of web content someone creates, and their prominence in the news.

The program uses‚ algorithms for analyzing and filtering public Web content, and matching it to the person who created that information or is mentioned in it.

This involves methods for cross-checking key data points identified from different sources, such as recognizing which John Smiths on the Internet are one and the same and which of them are different people.

PeekYou&'s competitors include similar people finders Spock.com (now owned by Intelius),‚ Wink.com (now owned by MyLife),‚ Pipl.com and‚ 123people.com.

The space is particularly crowded now due to how much more often businesses and people are using these sorts of sites to make major decisions, said the company&'s founder.

&''Not having a copious and well-defined presence on the Internet will soon be a serious detriment to anyone on the job market, if it is not so already,&'' CEO Michael Hussey told me. &''Employers are placing increasing weight on a candidatea4‚¬a4„s reputation on the Internet, and onea4‚¬a4„s online persona will be weighed alongside onea4‚¬a4„s resume for any given hiring decision.&''

&''The same goes for prospective dates,&'' he added. &''Chances are youa4‚¬a4„ll get &8216'Googled,&' and pretty much everyone knows by now that the results of that search can have practical consequences for you, both good and bad.&''

Prior to founding PeekYou in 2006, Hussey started the RateMy series of websites, which include sites such as RateMyTeachers, RateMyProfessors and RateMyFace.

PeekYou served five million people in February, up 300 percent in the past year, and Hussey said the company believes it will grow 10 times larger in the coming years, as its index continues to grow and improve.

Thus far, the company has raised $1.7 million total from investor Baldev Duggal of Duggal Dimensions.

PeekYou is‚ now profitable but said it is considering options for a larger investment this year to keep up with demand.

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Companies: 123people.com, Duggal Dimensions, Intelius, MyLife, Peekyou, Pipl.com, RateMyFace, RateMyProfessors, RateMyTeachers, Spock.com, Wink.com

People: baldev duggal, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Dell, michael hussey, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs

Companies: 123people.com, Duggal Dimensions, Intelius, MyLife, Peekyou, Pipl.com, RateMyFace, RateMyProfessors, RateMyTeachers, Spock.com, Wink.com

People: baldev duggal, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Dell, michael hussey, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs

Riley McDermid is a contributing reporter to VentureBeat. She was previously the online editor at institutional investing and trading forum Markets Media, which she joined in 2008 from Dow Jones/MarketWatch in New York. Her work has appeared in the The New York Times, the Associated Press, Portfolio Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and Barrona4‚¬a4„s. She has won awards from the American Society of Business Publishers and Editors, the Magazine Association of the Southeast, the Mississippi Press Association and the Atlanta Press Club, and was a finalist for the Pacemaker Prize for excellence in news reporting.

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