Peeps are made of people

A Stikkit peep [slang for "person"; also brightly colored, animal-shaped marshmallow treats, but that's neither here nor there] is essentially a contact, a card in your rolodex, an entry in your address book. A peep can be a person or an organization, a villa in Tuscany or emergency numbers for the babysitter — anything for which (or for whom) you want to track phone numbers, addresses, bookmarks, birthdays, notes, and other salient details.

In its new incarnation, a peep is more than a static "address card." It's a dynamic, ever-growing collection of the details you jot down about someone — on any number of stikkits — over time. Mention Susan Miller for the first time along with her phone number, 503-555-1212, in a "Marketing Teleconference" stikkit and Stikkit will create a brand new peep stikkit for her. Jot down Susan's email address a few days later in another stikkit (Send report to Susan Miller at susan@example.com), and Stikkit will automatically add her email address to her Peep stikkit. And so on and so forth.

Stikkit will link to Susan's peep stikkit from every other stikkit in which she's mentioned. And vice-versa: in her peep stikkit will appear links to each of those stikkits.

If you're the sort of person to whom this sounds a lot like lightweight CRM, this will sound a lot like lightweight CRM ;-) Managing the details regarding the important people in one's life is just as crucial as managing one's customers.

The practice of accumulating details about people and places as you get to know and interact with them mimics real life: you'll find just such details in your email inbox, scribbled on scraps of paper, decorating the corners of your whiteboard, and wending their way outside of the four or so lines you're given in your standard paper address book. After all, it's seldom to never that you get to know someone entirely (even their contact details) all at once. And even if you were to — they hand you their business card, for instance — who types or pencils all that in? If anything, you usually choose one or two salient details and summarily ignore the rest.

And so, we invite you to take a peek at the new peeps feature. We think you'll find it as useful as we do. All feedback welcome on the forums, where you'll also find how-to documentation.