Stealthy Spock is the People Search Engine
April 11th, 2007 | Categories: financing, launch, networks, social media, wikis
Spock has been one hyped beast. Buzz has been swirling around this stealth start-up for months now. This low-flying aircraft has carefully managed to avoid the media at large and focus on the company. And despite the hype, the company looks to have an exceptional service from my preliminary analysis…
Already, the company has raised $7 million (in December 2006) via Clearstone Venture Partners and Opus Capital Ventures. This was even before a BETA product was available.
At the core, Spock is aiming to be the Google of people searches - which it estimates to be around 30% of all Internet searches. Should this number be accurate, then obviously there is huge potential in a largely untapped market. Competitors include the likes of Wink and ZoomInfo - neither of which has made a significant impact on the search world or gone mainstream.
Search results and profile information are being aggregated from blogs, Wikipedia, and social networks, among other sources. Individual searches reference tags and meta data that is edited by users. Finally, a given individual can claim his/her profile through an e-mail verification process with Spock.
Exclusive screenshots courtesy of TechCrunch are available here:
What do I like about the profile interface?
- Prominent display of the search bar at all times
- Simple demographic information
- Abbreviated bio
- The ability to quickly and easily find pictures, related people, and even contact information
There is even a widget available… talk about web 2.0 compliant…
I would imagine that many people (including myself) end up on a Wikipedia page when researching a famous person. Not only am I biased to Wikipedia, but a link is usually present on the first page of nearly every search result for a given person. Having said that, I do use IMDB the odd time when researching a movie star or entertainer in particular. However, should Spock prove to be as useful as it looks, I may be changing my searching tendencies…
April 13th, 2007 at 12:34 am
hey aidan… glad you like the sneak peek
should be some more info coming out next week at Web 2.0 Expo.
and btw, i’m a big fan of wikipedia as well… however, it’s nice to know that even if i can’t get a vanity page on Wikipedia, i can still get my own page on Spock.
the service will be in private beta for a bit while we shake out the bugs, but hope to have something for you to check out soon
later,
- dmc
[full disclosure: i’m an advisor to Spock]
April 13th, 2007 at 6:19 am
Spock sounds great! Some comments for Germans see attached:
http://identity20.wordpress.com
Best Leif from Munich