Spock, the new people search engine, has been getting a lot of buzz the last few weeks. We posted an overview and screen shots last month and I recently moderated a panel that included them, Wink and ZoomInfo (notes are here). but the founders have been very careful to limit beta testers to just a handful of people. Starting today they are beginning to open up a bit in preparation for a summer launch. They’ve given us 100 beta accounts to give away. If you are interested, send an email to techcrunch@corp.spock.com. The first 100 people get in immediately, and everyone after the first 100 will get priority access in the next couple of weeks. Move fast, these spots will be gone in the next 30 minutes or so.
Update: the 100 spots were taken in exactly 30 minutes, as of 3:50 pm PST.
me me me, choose me! lol.
ok, spock does look kind of cool though, and I did request an account.
Are they gone already?
I’d like one please!
They are more than likely gone, but Spock is so much more interesting than the other people searches out there that it might be a good idea to get on the priority list.
Then again, it looks like everyone is rushing to the people search front. I wonder whose actually going to get some market penetration.
Steve
Howtosplitanatom.com
Amazing! Way to hype your way to premium. Down side to this is if your product sucks, you probably won’t get a second shot.
So i guess spock is the ultimate reference checker. Up pops a whole industry about how to game the algorithm.
Looking forward to the beta
Zaid – the product is great, but there is going to be a lot of controversy around the fact that the community can tag your profile and you as the profile owner cannot remove it.
“Wikipedia” War II… Make a note of it.
I love the idea, but I love more the marketing hype around it… that 100 invites is a great way to generate noise… I send mine in, let’s see what happens
Michael, after attending the “People Search” talk at GooglePlex I see no reason think Spock or Wink would succeed unless they make some significant changes.
I’ve put my beta invite plus an iPhone box on eBay
auction closes tonight
good packaging allen. you should get at least $10k.
Allen
that is the smartest way to work with those Invites, I still remember my good “$49.95″ Gmail Invites sales on ebay ! 
Please send me an invite too ! I have replied to techcrunch@corp.spock.com
Requires to have your gmail/yahoo/hotmail email password to function? Uh…. no thanks.
just to clarify – I was kidding – note the smiley!
They emailed me with an “invite” a while ago, then tried to log in to no avail, then they sent me a “sorry it’s not working’ email? What gives?!!? Do I need yet ANOTHER invite?!?!
Hey, I’m one of the lucky ones. First thing they ask for is my user name and password for my linkedin or email account – like I’m going to give that up to some site I never heard of before today – big leap of faith.
You are not required to have a gmail or other generic e-mail address. I just got my invite from Jay, and the service looks pretty good. I uploaded my photo and added some tags.
Overall, the service is far beyond my original expectations.
Was a little hesitant about the Hotmail/Password gateway to log in but I am taking faith that they are smart guys and won’t make themselves suspect to a major security breach or abuse the information. The fact that others can tag you will motivate people to tag their profiles as soon as possible with as much positive and accurate information.
Never heard of before today? Are you serious? Every major blogger has talked about them, and they are backed by Dave McClure… You must not make your rounds in the blog world
Got my invite
I just realized that I don’t have a beta account myself. funny. they’re all gone now.
Mike, I’ll sell you mine for the fair value price of $9,950…. $50 discount
I’m sure you could get access… Dave McClure has tagged you 5 times, just get in touch with him.
Hey, you can’t know everything about everything – I also try and have a life when I’m not reading blogs – who’s this mythical Dave McClure?
None other than the “master of 500 hats” … or at least that’s what my RSS reader claims
As for the service, from what I can tell most of the information is pulled from Wikipedia, LinkedIn, and other various social networks… They seem pretty good at putting everything together.
Mike, I contacted Jay at Spock, maybe he’ll send you an invite… I think it’s hilarious that you’re using TC to hand out invites, but don’t have one yourself.
just to clarify: while i’d love to have been an investor in Spock, i’m just an advisor in their venture… so i have a small amount of equity, but not nearly as much as i’d like to
unfortunately for po’ little ol’ me, i was contacted by Spock founders last summer after they had already raised their seed round, and the A round was for bigger poker players than i can sit at the table with. that said, i’m hoping my small stake is worth a house in Malibu someday. w00t!
(and yes, it is true that i am the puppet master pulling all the strings behind Silicon Valley startups these days. Muahahahaha!!! dance, startup boy, dance!)
- dave “still working on f*ck you money” mcclure
FYI – the Spock Widgets are open to display to the public on your blogs, web pages, etc. So, you can do an interesting search on Spock, or create an interesting search (by tagging several people who share a common attribute) and the click on the “widget ” in the upper ride side of the search page to copy the code and place it on your blog.
Hope you enjoy Spock.
thanks
Jay
Thanks tc and spock for the invite.
Initial impressions: Good crawling. Can’t claim my own profile.
It’s 2.15am now. Will continue playing around with it tomorrow.
Yes Jay…the widget is cool. But could you get the Spock robot to help me claim my profile via my linkedin account?
“Sorry, there was an error merging. The Spock Team will be looking into this.”
Sorry, my last post for the day. Promise.
We’re working on claiming your linkedin profile bug.
Sorry about the bug. That’s why we are in beta…
ok, I’m in now and having a ton of fun adding tags to my friends. Nik Cubrilovic got “lazy” and almost got “fat”. This is fun.
I sent him one of my three invites so he can fight back properly
I would like one, thank you:)
I’ve been critical of these guys based on what I’ve read. I’d like to see first hand. Maybe I’ll be persuaded to change my mind. Invite please!
yeah, i regret sending nik an invite now.
I’d love an invite. Looks very interesting. Thanks in advance!
I’d be quite happy to receive an invite. Thanks.
Thanks for sending!
nice capture Nik… but you’re gonna pay for that i think
btw, check this out:
http://www.spoc...-look%2345alike
Just wanted to stay thanks to Michael for the invite. I really enjoy the service, editing is so easy, can’t stop contributing.
May I get an invite?
Thank you so much if you can sen me one.
Davide
davide(dot)salerno(at)gmail(dot)com
can I get one ?
mishrazjilani(at)gmail(dot)com
I’d love an invite. Thanks. loadmemory@gmail.com
See Dave, you started all this!
I’ve got a couple invites left and am happy to provide others: http://www.mark..._invites_a.html
How are these guys able to index private profiles of MySpace(both technically and legally) . What if i want my private MySpace profile page not to be in their cache.
Any thoughts anybody??????
Spock is really nice. I have contacted Jay Bhatti and he says he will send me some more invites.
Join my new Alpha Beta Test Squad for advance invites to the best new tools and socnets.
http://twitter.com/vaspers