Wednesday, December 19, 2007

WTF is "spock power" and why does it think I know Wietse Venema?

Well some folks in my LinkedIn network are now sending me spock trust invitations. Sure why not? Live on the edge. Invite more identity theft. Some of the obvious differences (besides all the tagging) between LinkedIn are that (I guess) you can trust someone and they might not trust you and that you (and your community?) can vote on various attributes (tags?). Another nice feature was the automatically generated (via google) content that you can also vote on. For example I was able to vote down a Matthew Franz's (in Arizona) MySpace page. Maybe I should get one of those too, assuming they let folks over 30 even use it. Nah.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Matthew,

I've seen your profile on Spock and I think it looks pretty cool. So you've joined and made it working for you, right? I do not think you still keep the questions as mention opened for you, but who knows :)
so I'll leave you few notes, may I?

Q:"WTF is "spock power"
:) it's LOL
Spock Power is just the score of your contribution to Spock Community growth. On Social Networks like LinkedIn, you have the number of connections, then the number of people "you may reach" (but if you pay you may reach even God there :lol:), then there is the number of your endorsements etc.

Spock is a community collaboration project, as you've understood of course. So here it's really possible to measure your "contribution", btw it's all perfectly explained on the pages of Spock.com web site:
http://www.spock.com/do/spock_power/info
if not yet looked- look at there!

then your another question is even more LOL-
Q: why does it think I know Wietse Venema?
:)
who's Wietse Venema and what does it mean for you "spock think I know WV"?
however I believe you've already understood how Spock works so found an answer for yourself also about your mythical WV :)

The most easily Spock could be viewed as Web + Web 2.0 info aggregator- a Search Engine for the both Web's. Then the third informational channel for the Spock's decision making motor as of Search Engine, is community contributions- the content we upload (pictures, who knows what there be tomorrow?), the relations with the other people we declare, the tags we assign to ourselves and the other spock users and just registered profiles.

and then Spock is able to search through all this information- so good luck to Spock :) Today it's probably quite a raw service, but it's OK for a beta project. Tomorrow? We'll see. in any case Spock will grow and become huge, collect the critical mass of its users- and then what? :) I do not know, it depends of how soon- if really soon so it's just "success", if not too quickly but arrive to this milestone when the Web and Industry will be ready for Semantic Web- so cool, we'll have a Search Engine that's translating the Search concept to the next generation Web! But I think Google will be quicker to implement Semantics, however Google has missed the Web 2.0- shame on Google :)

well, probably I am too much dreamer :) anyway today Spock is a People Search Engine 2.0 and it's already a great example of practical use of the power of Web 2.0- not just to attract millions of users to then force them clicking on Google ads :), but to give us a service, a new service never existed before on the Web.

Regards,
Andrey Golub- an excited by ideas Spock user
http://www.spock.com/Andrey-Golub

Kenneth Udut (free.naplesplus.us - Naples News, Info, Jobs) said...

Spock is a blast. I think its the way of the future. At first, I reeled at the idea -- oh no, identity theft, here we come. But then I remembered when Google archived the ancient usenet postings (well, got them from alta vista), when infospace (I think it is them) figured out a few people I was related to (and a few that I'm not related to as well, alas) - and thought, "Hell, why not?"

So, I've been having fun with it. I think it's fantastic resource. And, if nothing else, it will help show to those that think their myspace is immune from the www, that it AIN'T. If you don't want it to be public, don't make it public.

[of course, getting out of phone directories is a trickier endevour, but if it's something you want to do, just contact each of the websites you find yourself unwittingly on and ask to be taken off. Believe it or not, most do oblige. Is it right that it's there in the first place? That's an issue for the ethics of privacy (as if there ever WAS such a thing of privacy -- privacy is really a modern concept that's unfortunately built on a fantasy we all used to share).

But if its here, at least make the representation of yourself as good as possible. Put up a good picture of yourself. Add a few things about who you are and who you are not, and pray that you don't have any enemies just waiting to smear your good name.

And who knows? Maybe it'll land you a job you otherwise might not have gotten, or help you get in contact with old friends. [I found an old classmate who once complimented my piano playing in high school in the PHILLIPINES - he runs a night club there -- THAT'S the power of the Internet - right there.]

Kenneth Udut
http://www.spock.com/Kenneth-Udut-zeeIb1Ou