The much anticipated people search engine Spock launched today, however is it slower than molasses. I have attempted to play with it a few times and have found myself waiting, and waiting and waiting some more before getting frustrated which follows with me leaving. I was able to create a profile for my name, add my main web sites, add a couple of tags and even locate a few friends.

Possibly the news of its release on sites such as TechCrunch, Search Engine Land and CNet to name a few have sent more people to the site than their servers can bear? There are certainly some cool features and I can envision this becoming a popular "people search" engine but not before they boost their server capabilities. Using the site today reminded me of the days when I was connected to the Internet with a 14.4 kbps modem.

Spock joins a growing list of "vertical" engines focused on the segment such as Zoominfo, Wink, Pipl, WikiYou, PeekYou and several others, including WhitePages.com and LinkedIn. What separates it from the herd is its ability to use algorithms to find and merge the majority of content into a unified profile. For example, when searching for my name, I found two profiles which both derived from MySpace accounts I have. I can claim these so that they will merge into the main profile I created today. However, repeated efforts to complete that migration via an email authenticating process have only produced error codes from the Spock site. I also do not see components that are supposed to update right away such as adding "Favorites" and "Tags" lagging or not updating at all.

I'll play around with it more when the current buzz cools down a bit. In the meantime, if you want to learn more about the site, be sure to visit's CrunchGear's profile of Spock.


Digg It | Post to del.icio.us | Post to Reddit | Post to Furl