Comments on: WikiYou Beats Spock to Launch

By: R, Garcia

R, Garcia — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 22:59:11 +0000

Not just personal information, but INCORRECT personal information – libel, in fact. I’m waiting for a Civil suit. SIgn me up.

I’ve informed Spock Beta of the libelous nature (three times) of the profile presented to no avail.

How much do I sue them for?

By: Elizabeth Chesney

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 05:50:20 +0000

I just found my personal information on this Spock Beta site and am extremely angry about this invasion of my privacy!!! I hope they get sued!

By: Gueule de Loup » Blog Archive » Ecrire sa biographie sur Internet

Gueule de Loup » Blog Archive » Ecrire sa biographie sur Internet — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 15:41:27 +0000

[...] fouinant la Toile vidée de ses petites ouvrières-bloggueuses, je suis tombée sur un article de TechCrunch qui parlait de WikiYou, un service qui permet de créer des fiches biographiques sur des anonymes [...]

By: Jay Gould’s Blog » WikiYou in the News

Jay Gould’s Blog » WikiYou in the News — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 16:36:05 +0000

[...] most read story was on the Internet was on TechCrunch. Michael Arrington described how we “beat Spock to launch“, but he continued to compare WikiYou to Spock throughout his review. As Mike would argue, if [...]

By: Benoît

Benoît — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 12:19:15 +0000

Yep all techcrunch fans, we are launching a nearly similar service http://www.pomku.com But more focused on the other individual.

You need more informations : http://www.pomku.com/blog (what is pomku) http://www.pomku.com

By: Martin Sketcher

Martin Sketcher — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 09:58:14 +0000

I really do not like where this is going. Maybe I have read this wrong but from the horses mouth we get “a biography for every person on earth, regardless if there have been “reliable” or “verifiable” sources of information for that person”… Regardless?.. So if you don’t want to be on there..tough?

So verifiable criminal history is OK?

The investment banker losses his career for not telling his bank he was convicted for doing weed when he was in college? Stole a car when your were a kid and now it appears as verifiable on this site??

Very, very sinister and will end in a massive lawsuit. I am a venture capitalist…wouldn’t touch it with a very large bargepole…. sorry guys.

By: Antje Wilsch

Antje Wilsch — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 02:46:19 +0000

iMarketingGuru, need you to come work for us at Story of My Life b/c that’s what we’re doing.

By: iMarketingGuru (SEO Wiki)

iMarketingGuru (SEO Wiki) — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 23:22:04 +0000

If this site were added to with the idea of digital storytelling, this would be an excellent implementation of this idea. What about the idea of families and people who wish to leave their legacy? Would this be of use to them in another context? Also, there needs to be more added to this with the issue of storytelling and other ways of building a user base. One big concern I see are link building tactics as well as spam issues. I love the idea of this site but there needs to be more thought put into it. I will definitely be watching to see what happens with this site… =o)

By: rob

rob — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 23:10:21 +0000

wikiyou is propogating through SPAMMING. Whatever you do, DO NOT allow it to access your address book by providing it with any usernames or passwords to your account. All your contacts will get an email from wiki you, and you’ll get IRRATE emails from them.

Clicking the link in the SPAM mail it sends, tricks your friends into creating their own profiles.

Bastards. I’ll never visit again, and neither will all the people this effects.

By: Jay Gould

Jay Gould — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 23:07:13 +0000

Mike we appreciate the review on WikiYou. Though, I’m a little
disappointed that we were compared throughout the article to
Spock. First let me say, I’m a fan of Spock and what they’re doing. However, you did not give us much justice to compare WikiYou against Spock as we are two completely different businesses.

Spock is a search engine and we are a UGC content site. We are actually a source of content for Spock, as they aggregate content of people for search results. We are not attempting to become a search engine. WikiYou is about the unauthorized biographies of everyone. The content on a WikiYou profile will be generated (rather than scraped like Spock) by our community of users.

A better comparison would be to Wikipedia, as you began your article by stating: “generally speaking they are the Wikipedia for people”. This is a fair statement as we value the opinions and views of every person. Unlike Wikipedia, we believe there should be a biography for every person on earth, regardless if there have been “reliable” or “verifiable” sources of information for that person. Something Wikipedia will not allow, and without a source of information, Spock has nothing to scrape to create a profile.

Comparing WikiYou to Spock is like comparing YouTube to Blinkx.

By: Wayne Smallman

Wayne Smallman — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 21:23:18 +0000

There’s been a heated debate recently about the pros & cons (mainly cons) of WikiYou (http://brianhey...ure-in-wikiyou/)

For example, anyone can create your profile, which is that odd combination of weird and scary.

It is a shame, because WikiYou is in principle, a damn good idea.

This current implementation isn’t quite right and seems to play right into the hands of ident’ fraudsters…

By: Allen

Allen — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 18:08:59 +0000

signed up and briefly tried it by setting up my own profile. totally not impressed with what it can do or how it looks. yuck…

By: Francis Morton

Francis Morton — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 17:42:04 +0000

How is this different than http://www.fatdoor.com? Why have you not covered that startup on TechCrunch. They seem to be developing something more interesting and compelling than these two sites..

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 16:21:10 +0000

Sure, WikiYou looks alright, but I just don’t think there’s any way that anything could compete with Wikipedia.

-Chris
http://www.nerdcouncil.com

By: Robert Dewey

Robert Dewey — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 16:20:08 +0000

There’s no reason Spock can’t launch. I think the “beta” is part of their marketing strategy. Spock — launch already!!

By: Zaid

Zaid — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 16:02:16 +0000

Wow! This is SOME crappy implementation of a great idea. Shame.

By: Jdj

Jdj — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 15:49:47 +0000

“wikipedia For People” – I Guess These Guys Didn’t Realize Wikipedia Already Has People.

By: wesley

wesley — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 15:45:08 +0000

It appears they just scraped imdb biography data for the inital set of results.. Stupid.

By: Andrew Pass

Andrew Pass — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 15:23:04 +0000

I’m wondering about the possibility of developing people focused wikis related to horrible crimes, such as the Holocaust. I’m guessing this has already been done. But these wikis can certainly serve as great memorials that will live on and as great learning tools.

On a second note, Michael, I’m really intrigued with the type of influence that a blog like this can exert. For example, your nice words about Spock can really give it an edge. (I guess that’s probably why you have full disclosure on this website.) I wonder if smaller blogs like my own need full disclosure?

By: Allen Stern

Allen Stern — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 15:19:18 +0000

whats the diff btw this and aboutus.org except that it’s for people. will people have the ability to edit their own page? i don’t like this idea at all.

plus the registration process is not well thoughtout – took me several minutes to figure that out.

what happens if there are multiple michael arrington’s – how does it handle that? for example, we know there at least two michael boltons – the singer and the guy in office space

By: KindAndThoughtful

KindAndThoughtful — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 15:14:23 +0000

“Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of a person — the biography of the person himself cannot be written.”

By: Internet Evangelist

Internet Evangelist — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 15:10:51 +0000

Hmm… Just tried their advanced Location based people search and it throws highly irrelevant results. Now i tried again and no results for the same search.

I personally like cleaner interfaces and this is one of them, though they have a lot of room for improvement.

Yet another SNS in disguise.

By: BeingParents

BeingParents — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 15:04:33 +0000

Wikipedia and Wikia has been very successful. A wiki and social network all in one sounds great. We love all in one web apps.

Sign me up