Database Reference
In-Depth Information
If you're targeting people who are likely to be developers, there's a good chance they'll have git-
hub accounts, and if they've opted-in to being found by email address, you'll be able to pull up
their public details. The API doesn't require authorization, or even registration, and it gives you
information on users' companies, real names, locations, and any linked sites, like blogs:
curl "http://github.com/api/v2/xml/user/email/pete%40petewarden.com"
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<user>
<gravatar-id>9cbf603d5f93133178367214f1e091b9</gravatar-id>
<company>Mailana Inc</company>
<name>Pete Warden</name>
<created-at type="datetime">2009-12-03T08:29:50-08:00</created-at>
<location>Boulder, CO</location>
<public-repo-count type="integer">26</public-repo-count>
<public-gist-count type="integer">0</public-gist-count>
<blog>http://petewarden.typepad.com/</blog>
<following-count type="integer">0</following-count>
<id type="integer">161459</id>
<type>User</type>
<permission nil="true"></permission>
<followers-count type="integer">58</followers-count>
<login>petewarden</login>
<email>pete@petewarden.com</email>
</user>
Originally, Rapleaf's API returned information about a person's social networking accounts if
you supplied an email, but it has recently switched to ofering demographic data on age, gender,
income, and address instead. The
FindByEmail
code still uses the old V2 API. Since the service
gathers data without any user involvement (though it does operate an
opt out
system), it's been
Another service that collects and aggregates information on people with no involvement from
the users, Jigsaw lets you look up people by email address. It returns information on a person's
real name, location, phone number, company, and job title, if he or she is in the database.
