Spock: Mahalo killer?

by on July 10, 2007

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If you haven’t heard the hype about a slew of new search engines that are either here now, or coming soon, you probably will. There’s Jason Calacanis’ Mahalo. There’s Barney Pell’s PowerSet. And there’s Jay Bhatti’s Spock.

I’ll try to get all three onto my ScobleShow, but today I have Spock which is actually a useful way to find information on people.

Too bad that Facebook is quickly becoming THE place I search for people’s email addresses. Seriously, you should check out my Facebook friends. The 2,200 people there are the “who’s who” of the tech industry. Everyone except for Fake Steve is there, it seems.

Anyway, Spock is an interesting personal search tool and one I’ll be using a lot to stalk Kevin Rose with. Why Kevin? Cause mentioning him in a blog post along with Jason is worth at least 13 more hits today. At LEAST!

To get serious for a moment, here’s a pretty interesting demo and a separate interview for those of you who really want the details.

Sorry about the headline but I had to get Jason’s attention. :-)

  • All good, I know you need the ratings. :-)

    Seriously, Spock seems very cool and I think they will do well.

    Of course, there are many vertical reputation systems out there... for example, for VCs I'd be interested in seeing if TheFunded.com is better than Spock for VCs, or VentureSource, etc.

    That being said, I think there will be *MANY* winners in search and people search is a great vertical (of course it's only 1% of what we will do). IN fact, I think we will be linking to Spock a lot if their results are good.

    Mahalo for thinking of us (and the flattering headline... frankly, no one needs to kill us since we're so tiny now we don't matter! :-)

    j
  • I haven't tried powerset yet, but Mahalo and Spock are great. How come everyone has gone quiet on Freebase? I think this is going to be an important part of search and intelligence in the next few years. After seeing Mahalo and the goal of freebase I'm convinced people powered search will be better than what we have now.

    -jlb
  • Spock is interesting, but not quite ready for prime time.

    For example, I sent about a dozen invitations out, and those people automatically got added to my Favorites list. OK, makes sense. Then one day, I check in and somehow, 40+ new names had been added to my Favorites list without my having put them there.

    I know who some of those people are, but why did they suddenly become Favorites? Beats me. There's no FAQ that explains it, either. And when I try to remove some of them from the list, I can't - they keep getting added back in.
  • William Smith
    Speaking of spock invites.. anyone have an extra one? :)
  • Mahalo killer...

    Now that is funny. Did I miss Mahalo becoming God or something?
  • Preston
    Ah, I see you're starting to respond to the blog punches by both FSJ and Denton. Who knows, may get two birds with one stone? I know Loren Feldman doesn't think it's the same person, but they act too similar.
  • Spock offered to "scan my address book" for people who already had accounts. Instead, hundreds of Gmail contacts got invites from me. They at least responded to my complaints, and made more prominent the "opt-out" switch for the scanning step (frankly, I think it should be opt-in... contact scanning is iffy as it is), but it's definitely not ready for prime time.

    Friends with multiple social network profiles have several entries in Spock, and tying them together -- which seems to be the point -- is almost impossible to figure out.
  • @William Smith: I have a few invites. Write me at thomashan@gmail.com

    BTW, I wrote a review recently as well, they're still very beta.
    http://www.thomashan.com/blog/2007/07/spock-rev...
  • I worked with Spock over the winter and Scoble and Jason don't worry - Spock and Mahalo are in no way competitive.

    I have invites available - leave a comment in my blog here: http://www.sawickipedia.com/blog/2007/06/14/101...
  • Nathan
    If you want a spock invite go to http://www.swapinvites.com/
  • @Ryan,

    This is Maia from the Spock Team. Just to clarify, the feature to invite all of one’s contacts is opt-in. A user has to actively choose to invite their contacts. Furthermore, based on the small number of comments we’ve recently received, we have already changed the sign-up process so that when you check that box, a warning pops up confirming that this is what the user actually wants to do.

    We think people may have accidentally checked the box, perhaps mistaking it for the “Terms & Conditions” or another required box they check without thinking. Spock does not spam people’s contacts unless we are previously authorized.

    @rslux,
    Spock does automatically populate your Favorites with your contacts from external sites. It is easy to remove someone from your Favorites - just click the star next to their name. We do this for your convenience, so you can find profiles on people you know on Spock. If you remove someone from your Favorites, they won’t show up again. Spock does not immediately add your contacts to your favorites - they are usually added over the course of several days.

    Feel free to contact me with any more questions or concerns!!

    - Maia
  • I really never though about search like something else then "one to rule them all". But it makes totally sense to nisch. I'll be glad to try it out and commented on your blog Todd ;)
  • I've got a buttload of Spock invites for those still asking: send email to dhaslam (at) topazpartners.com

    As for Spock, I'm still trying to figure this out ("grock Spock?"), as well as Gleamd (www.gleamd.com). This post and others like it discussing the uses will help.
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