Spock.com, is a startup that I briefly touched on some time ago. Sure there was a bit of controversy around some verbal gaffe’s the founders made, but there hasn’t been too much positive buzz around this application in a while. Read/Write Web has a new review which is largely positive.
Having had a chance to use it now for a few weeks, I don’t disagree with the review. In fact, its software is intuitive, and, potentially useful. That is, I say “potentially”, because Spock.com is one of these Web2.0 application that *really* requires large scale macro-type network effects to work.
This is what I mean.
The real power in something like Spock won’t be for people who are well known/ celebrities. Spock.com does that well. But on the other hand, do you really need a fancy search engine to tell you that George Bush has twin daughters?
No, the real strength will be in its ability to find everyone *else*. Friends you may have heard about, potential employers, employees, or even people you may have read about online.
To do that, it really requires a lot of data. Lots of people inputing their own profiles. Lots of people adding others. And this is because although its able to mine data from social networks, like LinkedIn or MySpace, the fact is that there are still loads and loads of people that *aren’t* on those sites.
Sure, Spock.com could bank on the fact that social networking usage will rise to a high enough level that it self-populates its own database past the tipping point — but is that a viable strategy?
More to the point: what about all the non-networked information about people that is already out there? Case in point: Mil Arcega, the guy that I was trying to look for last time. Now, he is a former reporter for a local news station out on the West Coast. Not exactly an unknown … but the only thing I could find was a MySpace profile on the guy, and I’m pretty sure (I really hope, rather) that it wasn’t him.
The fact that I pointed out which still remains true is that if you Google his name, there are loads of information on him. Its just not in a social network.
I’m all for web applications that are useful. Spock.com has a lot of potential. It just needs to increase the available data that it has to make it useful. Should they consider paying people a la Mahalo/ Jason Calacanis? Or should they just bring on a Celebrity blogger like Guy Kawasaki to drum up enough buzz? I don’t know when that tipping point will occur — but it should do everything in its power to make it so. Because without it, its really not as helpful as it could be.
Footnote: I have a WHACK load of invitations for Spock.com now. If you’re interested in checking it out, just leave a comment and I’ll try and send everyone an invitation.
