At some point or another, you’ve probably Googled yourself to see what the results were. Rather than Googling yourself, go Spock yourself instead! Yesterday, Spock officially launched their public beta. They call themselves “the online leader in personal search” and have over 100 million people in their database with “millions added everyday.” Hmm… maybe a company Google would want to sweep up in the near future?
Spock crawls the web looking for metadata which they then attach to results for a specific person. They get their information from sources like social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn) and other websites. It’s almost like one big comprehensive social network that incorporates all of the bits of information that people have at different sites. If by chance you do a search, and you don’t find yourself, you can register with them and “claim your name.” This once again brings up the importance of making sure that you’re careful with the information you include about yourself on social networks.
Another important part of Spock is the way they get people involved. Users are able to find friends, tag friends, and add descriptive tags which other users are then able to vote on. It’s definitely different from what you’d experience by doing a Google search for the same query, and for that reason, I think it could have some potential to go somewhere.
At launch yesterday, they were receiving 300 to 400 pageviews per second (which would come out to around 1 billion page views per month) with people eager to search for their name to see what would come up. They weren’t prepared for that many pageviews, so at times, the site was inaccessible. Today seems to be hit or miss, but go Spock yourself anyways. What did you find, if anything?
I tried spock.com … WOW, is it slow. Slow as in “go get a cup of coffee while you wait for search results” slow.
They don’t seem to have me in their database, although they have lots of people who share my name. That’s good news; that high school girlfriend who’s been stalking me won’t get any clues here.
All you need to do now is use the Flock browser and you can go Spock on Flock
Went to sign up till they wanted not only my gmail addy, but they wanted my password too….that ain’t gonna happen.
I check it out. After 18 pages, I gave up. If they are mainly using social networks, which it appears, then I will not be in their database as I do not belong to any social networks.
Just when I thought I found myself…turns out there is another Ryan Wagner in the town that I’m living in who is about the same age as me. Go figure.
New Internet Lingo:
spock is a verb. It refers to the people search engine, [spock.com]
Usage: Spock me! – telling someone to look you up on spock.com
You’ve been spocked! – an imperative for someone to look up their spock profile because something has changed, usually positively, like a new picture, a new tag added, a new link, a new relationship.
Kenneth Udut can be spocked at [spock.com] – to be spocked at means – this is the URL of that person’s profile.
And of course: Spock Yourself.