Track Every Move Of Celebrities, CEOs

By: Charles Bowen Ever think about what proportion of your daily ink is given over to the same, oh, 100,000 or so movers and shakers, celebs, heroes, and villains? Bill Gates and Julia Roberts, Warren Buffett and Warren Beatty, Ted Turner, Tom Cruise, and Tiger Woods?

We in the press are the chief people watchers of a people- watching culture. Add to that the list of celebrities who are locally significant to your paper -- such as a CEO with hometown ties -- and it's a wonder we have time left at all to take in the Sanitary Board meetings and the school referendums!

Not that anyone's complaining. People make good copy. It's just that tracking the rich and famous, the beautiful and the naughty takes reporting and editing resources that are often needed elsewhere.

So, it's time to let the Net save you some time. A great new feature from Forbes magazine called People Tracker promises to be your electronic sentry on the people-in-the-news beat. The service can keep tabs on any of some 120,000 business executives and wealthy celebrities.

Register for free, then find execs and celebs by searching on their names or by associated stock symbols and just add them to your personal tracking list that is stored online. Once created, this list can be used to find out what your specific subjects are doing and earning. You also can be alerted when fresh news stories about them have moved, so you'll know when they change jobs or titles or exercise stock options.

To use the resource, visit the site at http://forbes.com/peopletracker, where you will first be asked to register with the site. It's free. You'll be prompted to provide an e-mail address. This is important, because e-mail is used to alert you to news about the people you choose to track. You also create a user ID and a password, and at the same time you can direct the site to remember that stuff for you so you don't have to worry with entering it on future visits.

After you're registered, click the People link at the top of any Forbes site page to start adding names to your People Tracker list. Start by typing the person's last name into the search box located at the bottom of the Tracker screen. (If you're not sure of the spelling, enter the first few letters of the last name and let the site do the looking.) If you're interested in the executives of a particular publicly traded company but don't know their names, search by the company ticker only and you'll see a listing of all key execs with that firm.

Once you've located a person you want to track, click the check box at the end of his or her row and click the "Add person to tracker" button. To add multiple people, check out all the relevant boxes before clicking the button. Once names have been added to your People Tracker list, you can set up e-mail alerts to keep you updated on developments about that person.

To set an alert, find the person in your tracker list and click the button in the "Alert" column at the end of that row. Choose what changes you wish to be alerted to (ranging from "any news" to changes of title and exercising stock options), as well as the frequency of the alerts. Alerts are sent to the e-mail address you specified at signup.

Other considerations for using People Tracker in your writing and editing:

?People Tracker data is compiled from the Market Guide executive database and Forbes magazine's assorted lists, published from 1997 to the present.

?The Compensation column in the tracker includes salaries, bonuses, and other short-term and long-term cash compensation. The Options column includes exercised and unexercised stock options.

?To delete a person from the tracker list, click the button in the Delete column of a row. A notification window will appear, asking if you are sure you want to delete the record.