Sponsored Review

Spock.com - the best people search on the Web

So today I learned about a new people-finding site, Spock.com. Basically, you type in what you're searching for and it scans the Internet for people who meet your criteria. I've seen services like this before, but most of those services just search through directories (e.g. phone books, who-is, etc.). But, this service looks through websites, social networks, blogs, and so forth and is specifically focused on finding people. It's certainly more efficient than trying to Google somebody.

When I searched for myself, my social networking profiles popped up along with my web sites and blogs. That didn't surprise me, but I was surprised by the way all the information and photos from those sources were so nicely organized on one page. To be honest, it was a bit scary to see that much information about me in one location, but it was all information that I voluntarily made public, so I'm not too worried about it.

Here's one of my nifty spock.com widgets:



Then I started looking for some of my friends, and, sure enough, everybody was on there. From now on, whenever I need to look up somebody, I think I'll be heading to Spock first. And if Elvis is still alive and uses the Internet, Spock will find him.

Another neat feature is that you have the opportunity to tag other people's profiles. For example, if you know that your third-cousin (whom you don't like very much) is a repeated drunk driver, you can tag his profile with "drunk driver" and warn the world about his bad habit. Likewise, you can search through tags that other people have posted. For example, if you want to search for people in your area who are tagged as "drunk drivers," you can do a search for that. And to entertain yourself you can look through an overall list of drunk drivers and point fingers at everyone. (Is it obvious that I don't like drunk driving?)

If you don't like the tags that other people put on your profile, then you can flag it and contest it.

I also had quite a bit of fun looking through their top searches. I'm pretty sure their "Top Searches" isn't listed in order of popularity since it's all alphabetical, but the list gives you a good idea of what people are searching for, and it's a fun way to kill some time.

Happy people hunting!

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