In this paper, we describe an alternative web paradigm, called the Web of People. Rather than a web of pages, it is a web of persons. The paradigm is motivated by a number of obvious shortcomings of the current Web, in particular its tendency to provide centralized support tools for indexation and search. Instead our model exploits the distributed intelligence of the users. We describe the basic principles of the Web of People, its architecture, and its technical realization in a prototype system called SoMeOne. In particular, we elaborate on a search engine for the Web of People, aimed at finding people that act as relevant information sources. Categories and Subject Descriptors H4.3 [Communications applications]: General Terms Algorithms, Management, Experimentation Keywords Meta-data management, annotations, personal indexing technologies, information exchange, social media