American Idol: Where Are They Now; Finding Past Contestants

With the giant phenomenon of the newest season of American Idol, it's easy to forget about seasons past. So, what do you do when you want to find out information about a favorite from seasons gone by. Lets take a look at a few resources for finding what people are doing now.

First off, American Idol's web site keeps information about seasons past, short bios, a few videos and pictures, but no real information about the contestants unless they are being featured on the current season for some reason. Idol and Fox don't keep a whole lot of current information about past contestants, so it's not really a great resource for that, but it is great for finding a bit of information about someone that you don't remember so well.

Typically, I hit Wikipedia for information. While this is a user edited site, it has reference links to information, so it is usually fairly accurate. What I do is search for American Idol, then pick the season that the contestant I want was a part of, go to that season page and see if there is a Wikipedia link to that contestant. Not all contestants will be listed on Wikipedia, but quite a few are. The Wikipedia pages are, as I said before, user edited, so they won't always be accurate or up to date, so I usually look at the reference links to see if the contestant has a web site of some sort. Why don't I just search for the contestant and skip the Wikipedia? Because some of the contestants have fan sites that rate higher in the results and can confuse you.

If Wikipedia fails me, then I fall back to using my search engine of choice (Google) to search for the contestant. That means that you have to sort through results to find the one that you want. You will often come up with fan run sites or sites that are run by someone who is trying to impersonate the contestant, so using a search engine is often risky.

A lot of times, you'll find that contestants will have Myspace pages. Again, however, you have the impersonators out there trying to lead you on and confuse you. More often than not, a real contestant that has a Myspace page will also have a web site that links to it. So, search for the web site first and if all else fails, then go to Myspace.

Now that you know how to find your favorites, you can keep up with them better.