Naveen Jain at his company's offices in Bellevue

Naveen Jain has built some of the Seattle’s best known Internet companies, founding InfoSpace in 1996 and Intelius in 2003. Now, Jain is kicking around yet another idea, and it too starts with the letter “I.”

Meet Inome Inc., which is the new corporate umbrella for the properties that previously were housed under Intelius. Jain tells GeekWire that Inome — which stands for “information genome” — is much more than a simple name change. It represents an entirely new business.

“Just like genome is unique to each individual, Inome is doing the same thing for
information about an individual,” said Jain. “Google set out to organize (the) world’s
information and make it accessible. Our vision with Inome is to organize the world’s information that’s online or in deep web and make it person-centric — essentially assign every bit of information about a person to the unique person just like their genome. Our world is centered around the person and not information.”

As part of the change, Intelius will become a division of Inome as will the company’s US Search, Zabasearch, Talentwise and Live Family units. Some of the management from the units will run those divisions, while other executives will join Inome, said Jain. For Example, Chief Corporate Officer Bill Kerr will become president of Talentwise.

Jain said that Intelius is largely identified with online background checks, and because of that it was harder for the company to tout its other offerings, such as the Talentwise  service. Under the new entity, Jain said that the company may launch new units or brands in the identity management arena.

“We are really excited about Inome and want to provide — not just great platform — but utilize our expertise in analytics to find relationships and connections between people that are not obvious,” he said.

The timing of the change is interesting given that InfoSpace — which no longer has a formal connection to Jain — just changed its name last week to Blucora.

A controversial figure who has rubbed some the wrong way in the tech community over the years, Jain has hinted that an IPO could be in the cards for the company this year.

“We will consider an IPO if the markets are open,” Jain told GeekWire last fall. “We feel good about where we are, and feel confident about our future.” The company — which reported net income of $12.1 million on revenues of $122 million in 2008 — canceled plans for an IPO in 2010 after filing to raise as much as $143 million. It had about $150 million in revenue in 2010.

Could the name change signal that Jain is prepping to go public?

Previously on GeekWire: Intelius quietly buys Facebook genealogy app Family Builder

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