Alex Iskold, Tony Hung, and Frank Gruber made their way into Spock’s invitation-only testing, and have come back with high opinions of the search engine.  It’s “Vertical Search Done Right,” according to Iskold – check out his article for several intriguing screenshots.

But because Spock is so good, our attention is drawn to its weak spots.  (Think, if you will, of a new car – just one door ding or paint chip would kill me every time I saw it.  On a 15-year old junker, that ding would be rather less important than the missing side view mirror and mismatched hubcaps.)

“The main problem is that Spock is likely to have much more complete information about celebrities and well known people than about ordinary people,” Iskold writes.  “The reason for it is the amount of data.  More people are going to be tagging and voting on the president of the United States than on ordinary people.”

Hung echoed that statement, adding, “Sure, Spock.com could bank on the fact that social networking usage will rise to a high enough level that it self-populates its own database past the tipping point – but is that a viable strategy?”

And as for Gruber, well . . .  It’s hard to say whether it’s his fault or Spock’s, but apparently several of Gruber’s friends got Spock invites that he didn’t mean to send.  An example of great public relations work came as a result of this problem, however, when “The Spock Team” responded to Gruber’s post, gave several possible reasons for the unwanted emails, and signed off with an apology and a promise to fix the issue.

All in all, Spock’s shaping up nicely, and when it comes out of that private beta mode, we’ll be sure to let you know.

Search Engine Watch’s Eric Enge noted that search engine giant Google thinks so; it hosted a People Search SIG earlier this month.  And a factoid on the Search SIG page also supports the idea: “30% of all searches on Google or Yahoo! are for specific people or people related,” the group states.

But the spotlight turned to Wink, Spock, and ZoomInfo on the night of the session, as Michael Tanne, Jaideep Singh, and Bryan Burdick (the CEOs of those respective companies) took the stage.

Furthermore, “[Y]ou can see that many companies are doing quite well with their people search strategies,” writes Enge.  “Most people are also familiar with Classmates and its leading competitor Reunion,” he continues, and we mustn’t forget Pipl, which won a strong standing in the 2007 SEOmoz Web 2.0 Awards.

People search is growing segment of the search market; don’t expect the rate of its expansion to slow down anytime soon.

I’d add to their lists “Zude” which will be out in early May. It’s a Web service, sort of like MySpace, but that goes way beyond. You can drag and drop things around, and a lot more. TechCrunch wrote that up.

I asked lots of people what their favorites were, and Spock (a personal search engine) was the answer I heard most.

What was the best stuff you saw (if you went)?

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But, the person telling me this was alarmed at how much easier it was to troll through someone’s personal history than it is on Google or other search engines.

I can’t wait to see it, but imagine it will be the talk of the town. Spock isn’t alone, either. Dave Sifry, CEO of Technorati, told me last night that he knows of a handful of companies that are going after the personal search space.

I’ll report more on some of the things it lets you find after I see it.

UPDATE: Emre over on ReadWriteWeb has a very interesting discussion of privacy on the Web

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Since it’s currently only in beta, that statement led me to believe that Spock doesn’t have a lot of competitors. Still, the company claims to have “over one hundred million individuals indexed and millions added every day,” and it “expects to publicly launch in 2007.”

Also, if the term “people search engine” seems a little vague, Ken Elefant, a general partner at Opus Capital, was quick to clarify the matter. “A big chunk of the major web sites are about finding people, but there isn’t a good way to get specific information about the person,” he explained in a statement.

“Type in ‘Ken Elefant’ – on Google or Yahoo and you’ll get about 50 different websites describing places where I spoke or the Opus Capital website, but you don’t get information about me as a person.”

That’s where Spock steps in. It promises to help users “find and discover people” with an approach that would one-up Google (and Yahoo). And although the Spock service is only in beta, you can give it your name and e-mail address “to receive an invitation in the coming weeks.”

On a side note – I’m not sure if I deserve a slap on the wrist or a pat on the back, but I refrained from loading this article with Star Trek references.

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Doug is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest eBusiness news.