New People Search Called Spock in Development

Posted on November 16, 2006

A new people search tool called Spock is in the work that will be able to provide a photograph and information about people. The site will launch with 100 million profiles. CNET reports that Spock says it can return a photo, address, occupation and more if you give it a name.

Spock, a start-up that wants to make it easier to find personal information about people on the web, has launched its private beta.
Type in a name, and Spock says it can serve up a picture, address, occupation, interests and other information. Conversely, you can type in an occupation and location ("Rodeo Clown, Lubbock") and it will spit up people that fit that category.

VentureBeat explains how Spock could help you find relevant information about a celebrity.

Here's an example of how it works: If you type in "actress," Spock returns results like Google - with listings down a page. In this case, the first entry is Felicity Huffman, who Spock's engine finds as the most relevant for "actress." (Now, if you type in "actress" into Google, you'll see why Spock has a chance; there are few actresses in the results, except for the annoying site ActressArchives at the top). Moreover, as both Spock and LinkedIn make their profiles more popular, these will rank higher in Google's results anyway.
Continuing with our "actress" example, you first get a photo of Huffman, but you also get a bunch of tags underneath telling you how she is relevant. For example, there's tag for "Oscar nominee for best actress," and "Desperate Housewives," for which she is well known. There's a "Wikipedia" tag. If you click on these tags, Spock will take you its relevant results for that tag. This gives users a way of searching for information related to the Huffman.
The tag font size gets smaller if Spock's engine detects the tag isn't relevant for the person. So if users create a "sexy" tag for Huffman, the tag may get larger or smaller, depending on how many people agree. Spock gives users an option of clicking on the tag and selecting "yes" or "no." If they select no, Spock factors this into its database. Then, if you type in "sexy actress," Huffman will have fallen slightly in the ranking. Spock has built ways to keep people from gaming the system. If you want to add tags, for example, you have register - one way for Spock to monitor usage.

We won't know how accurate Spock is until it launches but it does sound like a significant competitor for people finding sites like Zoominfo.

SEARCH ENGINES