Spock, a search engine focused on finding people, launched out of invitation-only beta today. I haven’t mentioned Spock much here in the past. But I’ve been using it for a couple of months now and am glad to see it open up to more folks.

The company has added thousands of profiles itself, focusing on big names in various sectors: financial, political, entertainment, historical, etc. But the majority of the engine’s profiles will no doubt eventually be made up of user-submitted content and “lesser knowns” - hence my joy at seeing this search engine open up to the masses.

Spock doesn’t just help you find people. It helps you see how people are connected, what they do, etc. This level of refinement is accomplished by a tagging system that associates anything from political orientation to favorite food items with certain people.

If, for example, you search for “cocteau twins”, Spock will return not only the profiles for the members of the band Cocteau Twins, but also the profiles of folks who have tagged themselves (or been tagged) with the band’s name. These could be fans… producers… anything!

The tagging system relies on users to add tags to profiles. Searchers can then agree that a tag fits the person in question or disagree - and Spock responds accordingly. In addition to tags, Spock also shows you the profiles of people connected to the object of your search. Connections can be based on just about anything as well. The profile for George Bush, for example, also contains links to other members of the Bush cabinet, family members, political rivals, etc.

Links to other profiles on the Internet, references in Wikipedia, the news, and other resources make Spock a great starting place for researching people or events. It gives you a completely people-oriented perspective on just about any search.

Say you do a search in Yahoo! for “World War II“. Yahoo! is going to return links to Wikipedia articles, historical documents, WWII memorials, etc. Spock, on the other hand, will return the profiles of the people involved in WWII. From there you can see how they’re interconnected and aligned and jump into more specific content about each person (or the event itself).

My only fear is that people aren’t going to think about using Spock for searches like this. Since its early beta days Spock has been referred to as a “people search engine” (I’m guilty of this myself). But it has many other uses beyond digging for dirt on people. As the example I used above illustrates, Spock is a great way to get a different perspective on many of the same things you’d search for on any other search engine.

I love, for example, that the search for “iphone” contains the profile of Greg Packer - the guy who sat in line for days waiting for the chance to buy the phone (and he’s third on the list… right under Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive).

Play around with it. I doubt Spock could become your primary search engine. But I’ve certainly added it to a short list of frequently used specialty searches. You might, too.

[More discussion at Techmeme]