Spock continues to grow

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By Michael Lundberg | January 8, 2008

Spock logo I couple of months ago, I posted about my renewed interest in Spock after receiving several emails from other Spock users requesting to add me to their trust and search networks. My article also compared Spock’s people searching tools to some other sites such as Spoke and Jigsaw, who are similar, but ultimately have a different audience and goal than Spock. You can find that article here.

A couple of Spock employees noticed my blog article and corresponded with me via email. They even went so far as to set up a dedicated search page for me and send me a Spock t-shirt, which was really cool of them (thank you, guys!). My Spock shirt is sweet because it’s the first physical blog-generated gift that I’ve received (P.S. – if anyone’s reading this, I’m open to receiving more..). It also always seems to generates questions about Spock (“no, it’s not a Star Trek fan club!”). Hopefully, I’m being a good unofficial Spock company evangelist and helping to spread the Spock love.

I was genuinely surprised by the email exchange by Jay Bhatti and Patrick Cotter of Spock. It’s really great to see site owners, managers, operators and developers interested in their promoting their brand, buzz, and community. That kind of dedication is one of the reasons why I think that Spock is here to stay. In our email exchange, I promised Jay and Patrick that I would continue to follow Spock and write up some additional thoughts on the site. I know it’s a little late, but here we are 2 months later and here are some additional thoughts about Spock:

What’s I really like about Spock:

The people search tools on Spock are great. I’ve already found a few links to one of my old roommates, Ernest D Tolliver from college via Spock. Unfortunately, I still can’t find any contact information for him, but at least it’s a step in the right direction. It’s also a testament to how good the Spock crawler is at matching various disparate information on the web with discreet individuals. I had zero luck in searching for my friend via Google. Google simply isn’t an efficient tool for searching for people and that is the real “secret sauce” of Spock and what sets it apart from everyone else.

There is also a great thriving and expanding Spock community. I’ve already mentioned that I’ve received personal emails from Jay and Patrick, but something tells me that they won’t be able to respond to every question from their user base. Luckily, there are at least two public sites where Spock users can congregate and exchange ideas about their favorite people finder utility. Those sites are GetSatisfaction and the Spock Power Users group on Google groups. What’s great about those two sites is not just that they exist, but that they’re populated by more than just the Spock employees. Heck, Spock is one of the busiest GetSatisfaction forums (click for larger version). It’s just another sign that interest in the site continues to grow.

As great as Spock is, all websites can be improved, right? Here are a couple of things I’d like to see implemented in future Spock releases (don’t worry, they’re all minor):

First and foremost, I’d like to see expanded search functions. The current search functions are great, but a potentially useful search method would be to narrow your search to a subset of your trust network. How often have you added a friend to your network, then wanted to know which contacts you had in common, or who your friend knows at a particular university or company? Searching only a subset of your trust network (whether just one person or several) would open up all kinds of new search possibilities.

It would also be good if Spock had better nickname recognition and factored that into searches. For example, I searched for Ken Faw (who is in my trust network) and I couldn’t find him until I searched for “Kenneth Faw,” since that is how his Spock account is registered. I’ve since added “Ken Faw” to his list of other names (ie aliases) within his Spock profile, but when I searched for Ken Faw again he still wasn’t in the my search results. Perhaps the indexes occur at regularly scheduled times versus on the fly? One site that handles name searches really well is Linkedin (www.linkedin.com). I can search for Pat and get Patricks, Michael and get Mikes, and even Dick and get Richards. This may seem minor, but this greatly improves your search results.

My last suggestion would be to create a Spock wiki. More documentation is always a good thing, in my book. Spock is a relatively young site and one that will no doubt continue to morph in functionality and even focus. The current Spock help page is a good start, but wiki’s are always great because they are community driven and are usually very responsive to a dynamic site like Spock. In addition to helping the Spock users, a wiki would also help the Spock developers gain better insight into how the community is using the tools and what features to add. PBwiki would be a great wiki for the community. I first started using PBwiki after I joined Pownce, and I’ve found it to be incredibly useful.

Oh, I have one small (technical) request. It would be really awesome if Spock supported OpenID. I have an OpenID from ClaimID, and the more sites that support the standard, the fewer usernames and passwords I have to remember, and that’s a good thing.

In closing, Spock is a great site that just keeps on getting better. If you haven’t tried it, sign up here and if your Spock page already exists, just claim your page. I want to actively grow my Spock network, so once you do sign up (and I know that you will), send me a trust invitation. In fact, my next step with Spock is to selectively send out Spock invitations via my Linkedin connections. If you’re Linkedin to me, look for an invitation soon.

For more information about Spock check out these great articles at Mashable.com:

Widgetize Your People Search with Spock

Spock Serving 400 Pageviews Per Second at Launch

Topics: Web 2.0 |

6 Responses to “Spock continues to grow”

Jon B Says:
January 10th, 2008 at 10:58 am
That is very cool of them to send you some freebies, I’ll definitely check them out and see what the buzz is all about!
Thanks for the post.
Jeff Flowers Says:
January 10th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Thats pretty cool of them to send you some ‘Spock Schwag’. I wish I could get some freebies from an internet company!

Anyways. Nice post, I’m gonna have to check them out .
Michael Lundberg Says:
January 10th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
@ Jon B and Jeff Flowers - yes, it goes without saying that any schwag is cool, but it’s especially cool when it comes from a company like Spock.

Thanks for the comments!

Michael Lundberg
http://www.michaellundberg.com
Nida Says:
January 11th, 2008 at 10:17 am
i’m sad.. i just spocked my name and i got an error message
Andrey Golub Says:
January 28th, 2008 at 7:13 am
Hi Michael,
great post, I totally share your thoughts! and it’s also about Open ID- they won’t escape from having this implemented trust me you are the NNN-rd to repeat to the guys that there is not way forward for them if not to support Open ID And I am sure this feature is already in the Spock’s project roadmap.

just one comment though- when you speak about the Spock community you may not miss also our Facebook group, the Spock Fan Club 2.0:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=19789337936

where was born, btw, the first Spock application for Facebook (and then for Bebo):
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=16174235141

Thank you,
Andrey Golub- a Spock Evangelist and Blogger
http://www.spock.com/Andrey-Golub
Michael Lundberg Says:
January 28th, 2008 at 8:11 am
@ Andrey - thanks for the post! It’s my hope that OpenID will continue to flourish - at Spock - and elsewhere. As social networks continue to expand, users need a way to manage their accounts and profiles. OpenID solves that problem.

I’m not (yet) a Facebook user, so I wasn’t aware of the Facebook group. I keep telling myself that I need to have a Facebook account (it’s really the only social networking account that I don’t already have). I guess I’ll have to finally get around to creating one.

Thanks,
Michael Lundberg
http://www.michaellundberg.com

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Spock continues to grow

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