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Spock (website)
Encyclopedia
Spock is a vertical search engine or entity search engine on people. The name "Spock" is explained with a backronym
: "single point of contact (by) keyword." Founded in 2006 by Jay Bhatti and Jaideep Singh, it has "indexed over 250 million people representing over 1.5 billion data records." These records are from publicly available sources, including Wikipedia
, IMDB, ESPN
, LinkedIn
, Hi5
, MySpace
, Friendster
, Facebook
, Youtube
, Flickr
, Twitter
, FEC
, corporate biographies, university faculty and staff pages, real estate agents sites, school alumni and member directory pages, etc. The company maintains that "30% of all Internet searches are people-related".
As entity resolution is the main algorithmic hurdle of their indexing endeavour, Spock has issued and awarded the Spock Challenge Prize.
Spock opened its service to public beta on August 8, 2007.
of funding from Clearstone Venture Partners
and Opus Capital.
On April 30, 2009, Spock was acquired by Intelius
.
Backronym
A backronym or bacronym is a phrase constructed purposely, such that an acronym can be formed to a specific desired word. Backronyms may be invented with serious or humorous intent, or may be a type of false or folk etymology....
: "single point of contact (by) keyword." Founded in 2006 by Jay Bhatti and Jaideep Singh, it has "indexed over 250 million people representing over 1.5 billion data records." These records are from publicly available sources, including Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
, IMDB, ESPN
ESPN
Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, commonly known as ESPN, is an American global cable television network focusing on sports-related programming including live and pre-taped event telecasts, sports talk shows, and other original programming....
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a business-related social networking site. Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. , LinkedIn reports more than 120 million registered users in more than 200 countries and territories. The site is available in English, French,...
, Hi5
Hi5 (website)
hi5 is a social networking website based in San Francisco, California. The company was founded in 2003 by Ramu Yalamanchi. By 2008, comScore reported that hi5 had become the third most popular social networking site in terms of monthly unique visitors....
, MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
, Friendster
Friendster
Friendster is a social gaming site that is based in Malaysia, KL. The company now operates mainly from the three Asian countries namely in the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore....
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
, Youtube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
, Flickr
Flickr
Flickr is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community that was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to...
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
, FEC
FEC
FEC is an acronym which may refer to:*Foreign exchange certificate, a type of currency*Forward error correction, a system of error control for data transmission*Family entertainment center, a small amusement park or indoor equivalent intended for family fun...
, corporate biographies, university faculty and staff pages, real estate agents sites, school alumni and member directory pages, etc. The company maintains that "30% of all Internet searches are people-related".
As entity resolution is the main algorithmic hurdle of their indexing endeavour, Spock has issued and awarded the Spock Challenge Prize.
Spock opened its service to public beta on August 8, 2007.
Financing
In December 2006, Spock raised $7 million in a Series A roundSeries A round
A Series A round is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture funding in the Silicon Valley model of startup company formation....
of funding from Clearstone Venture Partners
Clearstone Venture Partners
Clearstone Venture Partners is an early stage venture capital firm focused on IT investing with offices in Santa Monica, CA, Palo Alto, CA, and Mumbai, India...
and Opus Capital.
On April 30, 2009, Spock was acquired by Intelius
Intelius
Intelius, Inc. is a public records business headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, United States. It provides information services to consumers and businesses, including background checks and identity theft protection. A majority of Intelius' revenue comes from selling background reports...
.
External links
- Spock - People Search
- Spock - the People Search Engine Co-founder, Jay Bhatti, interviewed by Stan Relihan on The Connections Show (audio podcast)
- Why I'm so excited about Spock by Tim O'ReillyTim O'ReillyTim O'Reilly is the founder of O'Reilly Media and a supporter of the free software and open source movements.-Life and career:...