Thursday, July 19, 2007
Spock Puts Logic in People Search
A startup is creating a people-centric search engine that will be maintained by a community of users. Spock.com takes information from social sites such as MySpace, LinkedIn and the public web and builds profiles around people.Jaideep Singh, Spock.com CEO, told me that their are 30 million searches each month around people, and generic search engines such as Google don't do a sufficient job because they are focused on search terms and not people.
People can claim their own profiles and make corrections and add tags, and Spock's users can rate the tags associated with people up or down to provide more accurate information. For example, if someone is known to be an avid surfer, then that tag can be voted up by users to build the association, while if the term "vintage cars" is not as important, it can be voted down to not appear on the list of tags.
Spock.com, which is currently in invitation-only beta, will rank the images and pages most closely associated with each individual. It can be searched by profession such as "actress" or "venture capitalist."
The greatest technical challenge for a people search engine is filtering through the common names to make sure that the correct information is associated accurately. My profile (there are about 21 people in the U.S. with my name) had some incorrect data (such as making me 9 years younger -- if only), but the information is easily corrected by community members or profile owners.
People-centric search could generate significant traffic if done well. For Spock, accuracy will be dependent on an active community willing to maintain the data.
Posted By John Gartner at 09:46 AM
Permanent Link: Spock Puts Logic in People Search
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