Spock Launches To Public

Spock, the innnovative people search engine, is back in the limelight today, following its official launch and release of the service to a public audience. Up until now, the service was available by an invitation only. Spock is building the largest and most comprehensive people search engine, with approximately 100 million individuals already indexed.

I have been testing out the service since June and it looks very promising. Searching for people has been a dilemma that several other companies on the internet have tried to provide a solution for, but so far, Spock looks to be the leader. It has a simple and clean interface that still manages to pack in a load of features that are not present on alternatives such as WikiYou.

According to VentureBeat, Spock "has a chance to steal searchers from Google. About 30 percent of searches on Google are for people… Spock could prove more useful to Google if it mines the Web for all the information about someone and then organizes it coherently." Results from people searches on Spock return much more relevant results which provide more useful information than the random links that Google's algorithm returns.

Spock differs from its competition by using algorithms (somewhat similar to the Google method) to find the majority of their "people" information, which is then combined into a unified profile for each individual. Although this method does not find everyone (some users, myself included, will have to add their own profile), it have given Spock a rather large database of people to search from already.

Each profile contains "tags" which are intended to describe a person and make it easier to find people. Users can add tags about themselves (as well as provide pictures and contact information) or others can also add tags. There is a voting system on the tags which can either boost a tag's ranking or eliminate a tag, but this could leave "the integrity of the personal profile in doubt," according to Ars Technica." As Wikipedia has learned, some members may choose to go through and vandalize a number of profiles with false or damaging information, and if someone adds you to the site against your will… well, you're out of luck. Once you're on, you're on—especially if you aren't managing your own profile."

With $7 million in venture funding, it should not be a matter of "if" Spock will iron out its wrinkles, but rather "when," as the company progresses and learns what works best. "We have built an impressive team with years of experience in search. The additional funds will enable us to expand faster and dramatically increase the scale of our growing infrastructure," says Jaideep Singh, CEO and co-founder of Spock.

One feature of Spock that I have been curious about is the ability to embed your favorite search into a blog or social profile via a small widget. Before today, it made no sense to implement this feature, as access to the service was limited. Now, showcasing certain "tags" or "searches" on another site can be done with ease and simplicity.

A small detail, but notable nonetheless, is that Spock has done some minor alterations to its logo. It has gone from and edgy, futuristic look to a more rounded, web 2.0 look.

Spock is looking good, but it has to keep up the good work to stay ahead of Wink, which now has some 200 million people profiles. Right now, however, I am sticking with Spock as my people search engine.