nerdcereal.com

You can type anything in a search engine and get results these days. For a long time I’ve had the habit of typing in phone numbers from calls I don’t recognize. Sometimes I get results, sometimes I just find the random string of numbers that appear in some other context. But the number would only show up if it appeared on a website somewhere in the internet cloud.

Apparently I wasn’t the only person doing these searches. Yesterday I came upon the site whocalled.us, which I dub “the Web 2.0 Phonebook,” (complete with the .us domain for “us”). It’s basically a database where you can comment about certain phone numbers and when they call you. Used ideally to combat telemarketing, stalking and all those ills.

The site is SEO’ed for success, especially since it’s the only web 2.0 phonebook of sorts. If a number’s on here, it will eventually show up in a search. And the more posts about a number, the better it will do.

Whocalled.us is great for numbers you don’t know, but it has the potential to be a breeding ground for vandalism of the numbers do know. Write posts about your friends’ and enemies’ phone numbers! Once the dirt is dished, this site will be just another method for stalking people online; all you need is a phone number. I’m going to go add mine right now…