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July 10, 2007
People Search Within One Network is Not Mainstream
Robert Scoble talks to client Spock's co-founder Jay Bhatti on PodTech's Scoble Show. He references FaceBook's people search capabilities which received some buzz earlier this week, but remember that FaceBook is a limited social network that is targeting a specific demographic. Industry guru Danny Sullivan comments on claims that its a widely used people search engine: "Really? According to? Facebook gives some stats that perhaps back up this claim, but only if you consider Facebook a people search engine. I don't. Not yet."
Spock's mission is to organize information around people and create a search result of everyone in the world, a far cry from search within one social network, such as FaceBook. According to Fox News today, they only have 29 million members. Spock has indexed well over 100 million people representing over 1.5 billion data records and they're continuing to add more every day.
Spock will list people not just listed in FaceBook, but on other social networks as well. Additionally, think of all the other obscure websites you can grab data from: Wikipedia, corporate and entertainment sites, MySpace, blogs, flickr, LinkedIn, the list goes on. When you're thinking of a really compelling search tool that has mainstream potential, you need to think outside of a popular social network box.
Another fun addition: ZDNet's Dan Farber shows an interesting search mashup with Reuters' Eric Auchard's mug as an example.
July 10, 2007 in Client Media Kudos, On Search, On Technology, Web 2.0 | Permalink
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Comments
Hi Renee,
Vertical search engines represent a simple differenciation on a mature market dominated by Google, Yahoo! and MSN.
Who will win the run for the first place on the people search segment? I guess it will depend on the quality of search results only. I think that users prefer to find 3 times out of 5 a big amount of information on the person they were looking for than to find 5 times a high number of results coming from anywhere on the web.
Nothing allows us to say that Facebook won't manage to become one of the top players as they are able to produce quality results through their huge and detailed user database.
Personally, I am using Ziki.com to manage my online ID. Ziki.com is the only one to offer free registration within Google, Yahoo! and MSN and its content networks to its users, which makes me appear at the top of the result list after a research on my name.
Posted by: Rupert Schiessl | Jul 11, 2007 1:47:40 AM
Hi Renee,
Vertical search engines represent a simple differenciation on a mature market dominated by Google, Yahoo! and MSN.
Who will win the run for the first place on the people search segment? I guess it will depend on the quality of search results only. I think that users prefer to find 3 times out of 5 a big amount of information on the person they were looking for than to find 5 times a high number of results coming from anywhere on the web.
Nothing allows us to say that Facebook won't manage to become one of the top players as they are able to produce quality results through their huge and detailed user database.
Personally, I am using Ziki.com to manage my online ID. Ziki.com is the only one to offer free registration within Google, Yahoo! and MSN and its content networks to its users, which makes me appear at the top of the result list after a research on my name.
Posted by: Rupert Schiessl | Jul 11, 2007 1:49:32 AM
Valid point about Facebook, but remember that with any of these social networks -- Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, they're great tools within one social network but Spock grabs them all. That's the beauty AND the power of it.
Posted by: Renee Blodgett | Jul 11, 2007 12:27:15 PM
I too am using Ziki.com to manage my online ID. I like the fact that my profile or ID will be the first paid result on Google, Yahoo and MSN when my name is researched. Further, Ziki allows those that are searching for you to contact you via your preferred method without having to register for their service.
Sure, Spock and Wink grabs information from all the "buzz worthy" sources, but you will still have to register for one service or another once you have found a person in order to contact them.
Posted by: Hayden Bond | Jul 12, 2007 1:09:11 PM
I too am using Ziki.com to manage my online ID. I like the fact that my profile or ID will be the first paid result on Google, Yahoo and MSN when my name is researched. Further, Ziki allows those that are searching for you to contact you via your preferred method without having to register for their service.
Sure, Spock and Wink grabs information from all the "buzz worthy" sources, but you will still have to register for one service or another once you have found a person in order to contact them.
Posted by: Hayden Bond | Jul 12, 2007 1:09:49 PM
I too am using Ziki.com to manage my online ID. I like the fact that my profile or ID will be the first paid result on Google, Yahoo and MSN when my name is researched. Further, Ziki allows those that are searching for you to contact you via your preferred method without having to register for their service.
Sure, Spock and Wink grabs information from all the "buzz worthy" sources, but you will still have to register for one service or another once you have found a person in order to contact them.
Posted by: Hayden Bond | Jul 12, 2007 1:09:57 PM
I too am using Ziki.com to manage my online ID. I like the fact that my profile or ID will be the first paid result on Google, Yahoo and MSN when my name is researched. Further, Ziki allows those that are searching for you to contact you via your preferred method without having to register for their service.
Sure, Spock and Wink grabs information from all the "buzz worthy" sources, but you will still have to register for one service or another once you have found a person in order to contact them.
Posted by: Hayden Bond | Jul 12, 2007 1:10:02 PM
