Spock Search: A new approach to aggregating data
Beam me up!
I've been sent a beta trial of Spock, which I'll admit I've been looking forward to trying. Spock is an interesting social network/ search tool. Basically, it indexes and uses information stored in online social network databases and in address books to create searchable profiles of people.
From the Spock folks: "[Our] mission is to organize information around people and create a search result of everyone in the world. 30% of all internet searches are people related. We have created the most relevant, accurate, and largest search application focused on people. To date we have indexed over 100 million people representing over 1.5 billion data records. We plan to eventually index everyone in the world."
They're off to a good start. With VC funding through Clearstone Venture Partners and Opus Capital, they're adding on content and tools daily.
I've spent some time searching, first myself (duh!), then George Bush, then Jim Brady, then George Michael. (Yes, in that order. Time for a new therapist?)
I found some of the information about me to be accurate (my jobs, my bio, where I've gone to school). Some, like where Webbmedia Group is based and where I currently live, wasn't.
Here's what I got searching George Bush:
And this...
Here's what turns up for Jim Brady:
It's an interesting way to search, since most of the information is coming via Wikipedia or social networking sites where, at least in theory, the searchee has entered the information his or herself.
Spock looks for people only...I think some work still needs to be done to tweak results. But it appears as though the team is relying on crowdsourcing to take care of inaccuracies. For now, it's an interesting little aggregator.
