Marc Canter sent out invites for Spock, a new search engine for finding people. I signed up and found it interesting but my first experience left me with more questions than answers.

Spock is the online leader in personal search, helping users find and discover people. With over one hundred million people already indexed and millions added every day, Spock is building the broadest and deepest people specific search engine.

First of all, "leader in personal search"? Really? Seems like Google and Linkedin could legitimately claim that title, but I digress. Person search is a growing area, part in response to our evolving sophistication with search engines and part as a response to the massive amount of meta data about people that has been accumulating.

I like the idea a lot but had an interesting experience with Spock that left me feeling it is an acquired taste. Their UI is simple and effective, but the very simplicity that makes it inviting for a first time user obscures the powerful capabilities that the engine is capable of delivering.

The process of collecting information about you begins when you create a new account, but like a lot of new users an any service, I am reluctant to give them much information about my profiles on other social networks. I would have preferred that they ask me for the minimum to get started and then at various points add additional information either through prompts or automatically collecting it and then asking me to verify.

Another point worth covering is the privacy aspect, more specifically the transparency by which these companies operate when their entire business model is predicated on collecting information about people. Rapleaf found itself in a shit storm recently with regard to how the were sharing that profile information and it really underscores the point that we the people are underwriting these businesses either through our usage or simply through our implied consent that they do what they wish with our personal information.

Actually, the Rapleaf situation is interesting because it wasn’t so much what they were doing with the data but rather the lack of transparency Auren admits they displayed. Spock should take a cautionary note from this episode and bare all with regard to how they use the data to support their business.

Tags: Spock, privacy, Rapleaf, person search, metadata