Comments on: What is Spock? http://blogs.gnome.org/bolsh/2007/12/17/what-is-spock/ Dave Neary's view of the world Sun, 11 Dec 2011 14:17:21 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Patrick Wagstrom http://blogs.gnome.org/bolsh/2007/12/17/what-is-spock/comment-page-1/#comment-1032 Patrick Wagstrom Tue, 18 Dec 2007 17:17:10 +0000 http://blogs.gnome.org/bolsh/2007/12/17/what-is-spock/#comment-1032 I'd be pretty leery of Spock, it seems to be capitalizing on a lot of the social network conceptual buzz, without actually understanding what social networking is. Basically, they link people together based on trust relationships, and use additional information scraped out of web pages. However, let's just say their additional information is questionable at best. For example, the author of AmericaBlog was flagged as the top result for "pedophile" merely because he wrote a lot about former congressman Mark Foley, who left the US House of Representatives because he was just that. Wired news had an article about it a few months ago at: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/startups/news/2007/08/spock_reputation Really, the issue with most of these "social networking" systems is that they're applying many social network analytic algorithms to get "useful" results, without understanding the underlying sociology of the community, or the inherent assumptions of the metrics. Needless to say, it looks like Spock is something you may want to stay away from until they fix their system and provide a better way to remove tags associated with individuals. I’d be pretty leery of Spock, it seems to be capitalizing on a lot of the social network conceptual buzz, without actually understanding what social networking is. Basically, they link people together based on trust relationships, and use additional information scraped out of web pages. However, let’s just say their additional information is questionable at best. For example, the author of AmericaBlog was flagged as the top result for “pedophile” merely because he wrote a lot about former congressman Mark Foley, who left the US House of Representatives because he was just that.

Wired news had an article about it a few months ago at:
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/startups/news/2007/08/spock_reputation

Really, the issue with most of these “social networking” systems is that they’re applying many social network analytic algorithms to get “useful” results, without understanding the underlying sociology of the community, or the inherent assumptions of the metrics.

Needless to say, it looks like Spock is something you may want to stay away from until they fix their system and provide a better way to remove tags associated with individuals.

]]> By: James Henstridge http://blogs.gnome.org/bolsh/2007/12/17/what-is-spock/comment-page-1/#comment-1031 James Henstridge Tue, 18 Dec 2007 04:36:57 +0000 http://blogs.gnome.org/bolsh/2007/12/17/what-is-spock/#comment-1031 I got a few invites to Spock too. Like you, I don't know what's in it for me to join. I got a few invites to Spock too. Like you, I don’t know what’s in it for me to join.

]]> By: Paul Cooper http://blogs.gnome.org/bolsh/2007/12/17/what-is-spock/comment-page-1/#comment-1030 Paul Cooper Mon, 17 Dec 2007 22:17:46 +0000 http://blogs.gnome.org/bolsh/2007/12/17/what-is-spock/#comment-1030 I saw some pre-launch hype about Spock being a search engine for people, that would aggregate and index all kinds of things about people (blog, flickr, mailing lists, articles, youtube,...), so when i search for Dave Neary, it would provide neat little capsules of info about each Dave Neary so I could decide which one I was stalking / interested in. Unfortunately when it went public and I tried it, it turns out it's just Yet-Another-Social-Netowrking-Roach-Motel, only late to the party so doubly annoying. I saw some pre-launch hype about Spock being a search engine for people, that would aggregate and index all kinds of things about people (blog, flickr, mailing lists, articles, youtube,…), so when i search for Dave Neary, it would provide neat little capsules of info about each Dave Neary so I could decide which one I was stalking / interested in.

Unfortunately when it went public and I tried it, it turns out it’s just Yet-Another-Social-Netowrking-Roach-Motel, only late to the party so doubly annoying.

]]> By: Luis Villa http://blogs.gnome.org/bolsh/2007/12/17/what-is-spock/comment-page-1/#comment-1029 Luis Villa Mon, 17 Dec 2007 21:16:44 +0000 http://blogs.gnome.org/bolsh/2007/12/17/what-is-spock/#comment-1029 It apparently raids your gmail account and spams everyone you know; at least, that is the excuse from the two people who have so spammed me. It apparently raids your gmail account and spams everyone you know; at least, that is the excuse from the two people who have so spammed me.

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