The people people

A short post on John Batelle's blog this morning caught my eye. No, not the sad news about Kurt Vonnegut, but the link to a preview of Spock on TechCrunch.
There's been plenty of coverage of the phenomenon of blind daters Googling their prospective dates, and it's not unusual to search for someone's name before you meet them in a work context. But I'm eager to see if tools like this work outside of the world of Hello magazine. After all, it's pretty easy to get information on well known personalities, and to a certain extent the correct search techniques can light upon much of the information displayed in the screen shots on TechCrunch, although it won't be presented nearly as neatly, or as cleverly. The real test will be finding out information about average joes like you or I. Sure, if you have an unusual name, then it's more likely that your details will stand out. looking at Wink, an earlier engine in a similar vein, which relies on social networking sites such as Bebo, MySpace and LinkedIn, would suggest that a search for a fairly unusual name will find the person you're looking for. Search for a Jones or a Smith and things get a bit more sticky.
On top of that is context and local data; The keeper of the Queen's Parks in Scotland might sound like a jumped-up parkie, but in fact he (or she) is a significant figure.
With $7m in round A financing from two VC firms, I'm sure the team at Spock have faced far tougher questions that this. With a beta launch next week, it won't take long to find out.