People Search Digest

Searching for people online is becoming more high tech than the Starship Enterprise! Spock.com is a beta site that is currently invitation only - an invite can be obtained by registering on their website. Its mission is to create a search engine completely devoted to people searches. It has aspirations to be the online leader in personal search, founded on their claim to have over one hundred million people already indexed (while adding millions every day).

The funding for this newbie site in the people search universe is being backed by Clearstone Venture Partners (Overture, PayPal, NetZero, MP3.com), which is a leading early-stage venture capital firm in the consumer Internet space. What separates Spock from other search engines is that it is a vertical search engine. It has a person-centric perspective when a query is entered. It interprets any keyword entered as if it is only about people. The site provides a rich set of attributes that characterize people, like geography, birthday, occupation, etc. It allows the customer to use tags as links or relationships between people, connecting people even better than a Vulcan mind-meld. The designers of the site also created a self-correcting mechanism via a user feedback loop.

Another interesting feature they’re playing around with is a tool which allows users to vote on the existing facts; in essence, teaching the computer what is right, and what is wrong. It’s all very innovative and promising, but it is still an infant site. Only time will tell if Spock will, in fact, live long and prosper.