The long awaited public unveiling of Spock, the people search engine, takes place today. According to company representatives, they already have 1.5 billion people indexed. I did a brief review of Spock back on June 29th.
One of the neat things about Spock is that as a vertical search engine, it operates in a single context. Terms like “boxer” lists famous boxers, or “baseball” lists famous baseball players. Concpetually, this will help you narrow down on people you are looking for more quickly, especially when you don’t know the exact name of the person you are looking for.
Users can tag your name with labels. For instance, one beta user recently tagged me with “Search Engine Watch”. These labels help define what searches you will appear for. In addition, people can claim their profiles, which then provides them with the ability to edit your own information. For example, you can uploade a photo. The service also already has anti-spam mechanisms built-in, although it will be interesting to see how these stand the test of time.
Overall, it’s a cool looking service, worthy of checking out.