123people is a people search engine that has been in private beta since February of this year. Originally covering only Europe, the company is throwing open its doors to international people searches with a US launch and going into open beta today.

If you have ever heard that nothing is private on the Internet, you can believe it. Following in the footsteps of sites like Spokeo and Wink, 123people culls information about you from a variety of sites on the Web. Some of these you expect to be public, like Flickr, but other information comes from sites people might assume are more private, like Facebook.

In addition to increasing its range, 123people is inviting everyone in. I did a quick search for my name and found a surprising level of accuracy. The correct information about me made up a good portion of the results, with a few other Leslie Postons appearing in the address and email section. That’s pretty good for a people search that has only been out a few months and that hasn’t been concentrating on culling US data.

123people also added a few new features today, including real time results, a growing trend on many social media and Web 2.0 sites. A crowdsourcing data feature now allows users to rate the quality of information on people and add new information. This feature could be a bit scary if your friends or associates decide to add your address or phone number without asking you first.

123people also gathers information from even more sources. In addition to Google, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, email addresses, phone numbers, and LinkedIn profiles, 123people now gathers information from MySpace, Bloglines, Friendster, Last.fm, ZoomInfo, Blogger and more. It returns a surprisingly comprehensive set of results.

Other new features include biographies, news from sources like CNN, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. It pulls your instant messenger profile from AIM, your bio from Twitter and culls every major search engine, not just Google. The amount of information 123people gathers rivals that of any paid private investigator. Whether you want to find out more about that blind date or locate and old friend or colleague, 123people is fast becoming a resource than can help you do that reliably.

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