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The Spock for searching
Once upon a time in order to find information on a person you had to put in a lot of time and hard work. You had to ask around, snoop through garbage cans, use things like binoculars and stakeouts. Things sure have changed. Now all you need is an Internet connection and a name.
Cybersnooping takes another leap forward next week when Spock -- a new search engine -- beta launches. Spock promises to be a step forward in the field of people searching/stalking. Along the same lines as Wink, Spock searches through the web and returns any information it can find on the person entered. As with most people searches, Spock checks the obvious social networks, but the aim is to go well beyond that and actually index the entire web. It seems as though Spock isn't going to be content with simply being another people search. It is planning to do what Google did for web searching, and what Amazon did for product searching. Spock's founders - Jaideep Singh and Jay Bharti -- claim that 30% of all Internet searches are people related, and that alongside Amazon and Google, Spock will complete some sort of holy trifecta of web searching. While it may be true that almost a third of web queries are people related, one has to wonder if those millions of lonely souls searching "Pamela Anderson" are really going to be satisfied with the results Spock provides.
Spock does have some interesting features however. Not least of which is the ability for users to claim their own names. By "proving" your identity, you can take hold of your results and decide, among other things, what photos will be displayed and also add additional personal information. You identify yourself by showing that you have access to a personal data source, such as a MySpace page. Clearly a flawless means of identification. Spock also allows you to import a contact list from places like Outlook, and perform searches against that list. Because, you know, that's way easier than asking them about themselves.
Comments
3
Subscribe to commentsdpApr 15th 2007 10:16AM
One interesting thing about it is that if it's a a 'better than most' search engine, it might give me/us a way of pre-emptively revising what other people find about us.
Mark StevensApr 15th 2007 2:45PM
Soon to be renamed Webfly or something stupid when Paramount sues them.
ChristiJun 8th 2007 9:03AM
I haven't looked up Pamela, but by clicking one of the tags, I somehow stumbled upon George Bush. That's when I became disapointed with Spock! The profile was a direct copy of the info found on Wikipedia!! I would probably find more info on a site like peoplesearch.com! Although I have a profile on Spock.com as well, but I have decided it is more of a social network search, rather than a people search engine. Just my take on it.