Is Spock a social network, psychology experiment, or joke? I don’t really know at this point. Like many of you, I have been receiving Spock invites on a regular basis. I’ve also been hearing quite a few really smart people say that they just don’t really get why someone would use Spock. I tried it myself, and had the same reaction. Kind of a “why am I doing this?” thought.
This got me thinking. Is it possible that Spock could have another purpose? Maybe it is a psychology experiment being run out of a university research department somewhere to see how many of us are gullible enough to join and fill out a profile for a site with no benefits. It wouldn’t be the first time someone made up a social networking site just to see how many people would express interest for a site that didn’t even exist.
OK, I’m not really serious about the conspiracy theories, and yes, I did fill out a profile, but seriously, does anyone out there find Spock useful for something?!? If so, leave a comment; I am very curious.
Related Fast Wonder Blog posts:
- Starter Kit: Social Media and Social Networking Best Practices for Business
- Macs, Twitter, Social Networks, and more at Defrag
- Everyone’s a Peer. Live with it.
Thanks to Todd for the idea for the title of this post.
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Dawn,
Remember Spock.com’s origins as a people search engine and the privacy concerns that caused when it first launched. I’m not sure what it really is now, but I’lk throw my vote with the conspiracy nuts before I would consider it a trusted network.
I’m also scratching my head over Spock. It doesn’t offer anything compelling. My guess is that once enough people add themselves and establish enough connections (across multiple social networks) is that its value as a ‘people search engine’ might see the light of day. But that’ll take a long time, and a lot of people adding data into Spock, before it’s at all useful in that regard. By that point nobody may care!
Hey Dawn,
As a Spock employee I figured I might add a little bit of insight into some of the cool things that you can do with Spock. For one, as noted above we’re more of a people search rather than a social network. What makes Spock unique is the ability to search by tags or attributes such as a university, city, occupation, favorite food, hobby, etc. Since Spock takes information from all across the web and organizes it in an easy to view format, we feel that in many ways its a better site to search for people than Google or Yahoo. With the ability to add information it enables people to enhance their own search result and others. As far as using Spock for every day purposes, our new news feed allows you to be updated on your own search network. So if one of your friends updates their Twitter page and changes their Myspace photo, Spock will let you know.
As far as your security concerns I can assure you that we don’t store any passwords or release information. Please feel free to e-mail me if you have any other questions-patrick@corp.spock.com
As a fan of Spock.com, I’m a tad biased. Okay, I’m VERY biased.
Making it easier to search public profiles that are made on public networks on public webpages that you could also find on Google is just a service whose time has come.
There are plenty of private networks with private, inaccessable webpages that someone could join and NOT have show up on Spock. But if someone chooses to be on a public network, well, that’s just the nature of the Internet. With Google’s attempts to index the Universe in a general way, it makes sense that a people search wouldn’t be too far behind. Jay Bhatti and the team at Spock are just the people to do it.
Taking the trouble to index the dead as well as the living is one feature that is really cool. As time goes on, Spock will prove to be a quicker and richer reference than Wikipedia for students to get details about a person they’re studying. I’ve helped it along, finding famous students of Isaac Newton and adding them as relations to Newton on a lark one night.
I enjoy adding old classmates and co-workers from my past. Some people like looking up the famous – that’s probably one of the most popular uses of Spock – but it’s not my bag. Still, I’m glad the feature is there as well.
Beyond that, the user interface is very intuitive and a sheer pleasure to use. That, if nothing else, will keep people utilizing Spock.
Kenneth Udut
http://www.spock.com/Kenneth-Udut
spock seems to be one of the many web 2.0 sites that allow you to search all the social networks at one time. I think this is a great idea as search engines don’t always get this aspect of searching correct.