Harrison Tang Spokeo Co-Founder and CEO : “Our wide array of products is built for life as you live it. Whether you need to search people or protect your own identity, we have you covered”

Spokeo is a people search engine that organizes about 15 billion records into 600 million person entities to help over 15 million users a month to search, connect, verify, and know who they’re dealing with. Spokeo started as a social network aggregator in 2006 during the Web 2.0 era. Back then, new social networks came out every other month, so the founders of Spokeo identified an opportunity to aggregate social media services to help streamline people’s digital lifestyles. Over time, the company discovered that users were more interested in searching for other people, so the company evolved into a people search engine to help people search and connect with each other. Most recently, Spokeo launched Spokeo Protect, a suite of identity protection products so that people can monitor and protect their own digital identities. Spokeo solves the problem of “identity”, or who we are, so that we can better understand ourselves and the people around us.  

In conversation with Harrison Tang Co-Founder and CEO of Spokeo

Q. Can you tell us about your services in brief?

Spokeo today is a people search engine and a public identity platform that organizes about 15 billion records into 600 million person entities to help over 15 million users a month to search, connect, verify, and know who they’re dealing with.

Q. What does innovation mean to you and how do you deliver it through your services?

Innovation is defined as “new ways or methods to solve a problem”, and the problem that Spokeo is trying to solve is the problem of “identity,” and specifically how we can aggregate public information that is dispersed in multiple locations into one easy-to-use public “identity” profile. “Identity” is defined as “accessible characteristics and attributes about a distinct entity”, so the problem of identity can be subdivided into “data”, “entity”, and “access management” dimensions. To tackle all three areas, you need to have an interdisciplinary approach, a deep understanding of how data works, and a know-how for intuitive presentation of data, or what we call “Beautiful Data”. Spokeo is the only Data + UX company that aggregates and organizes public data so that we can better help people connect with long-lost family and friends, protect themselves, or verify people’s identities.

Q. Can you tell us about your data management system and compliance?

We are one of the original data aggregators that aggregate data from public records and sources. Once the raw data comes in, we clean, transform, and map it to a standardized schema. Afterwards, we link, merge, and perform “entity resolution”. Lastly, we present data in beautiful data experiences. We have seven stages of data processing, as opposed to the industry standard of three, and we perform multiple quality checks throughout different stages. Moreover, we encrypt sensitive data, and we don’t display certain data elements for privacy reasons. We have a robust data governance and information security practice to make sure that we are showing the right data to the right people.

Q. Developing high quality services requires the support of high level talent and dedication. How did you manage to form your dream team?

I think you need to have a clear vision and a Management-By-Objective framework. We use the OKR framework, which stands for Objective and Key Results, at Spokeo. You don’t want to manage every little task; rather, you want to manage objectives. You don’t want to dictate what people are doing everyday; rather, you align everyone towards a common goal.

A company is an example of “entitativity”, or an entity of entities, and how do you make sure that people feel connected to this artificial construct called the company? There are three ways to do it: (1) shared or common outcomes, (2) shared characteristics, such as cultural values, and/or (3) physical proximity. Obviously, it’s not easy to leverage physical proximity to build cultures in the post-pandemic world, but you can still work on refining your common outcomes and shared values to build a coherent company.

Q. Do you have any new services ready to be launched?

We recently launched a new identity protection service called Spokeo Protect. It helps users better understand their own identities in addition to searching for other people’s public identities. As a result, users can have a 360 comprehensive understanding of what’s happening around them and who they’re dealing with.

Q. How do you expand into IDP from people search?

There are 3 roles for people involved in the people search space: (1) Searcher or Verifier, (2) Data Subject or the person being searched, and (3) Issuer or data sources. Spokeo has been building tools and services to empower searchers and verifiers, and our new Identity Protection initiative, Spokeo Protect, is about building tools and services to empower data subjects to take control of their own identities while also allow them to switch into the role of searcher/verifier to research the already-public identities of others.

Q. Can you tell us how your IDP is going to be different from other services?

Spokeo Protect is different because we help you understand your identity and the risks to it better than anyone else. Our current Identity Protection service includes features like dark web monitoring and credit monitoring. In the future, we plan to add decentralized and self-sovereign identity features so that we can move identity into the Web3 era.

Q. What does the future hold for your company and its customers? Are exciting things on the way?

One of the biggest trends in identity is “decentralized identity” and “self-sovereign identity”, which aims to empower billions of users to intermediate identity-related transactions. It could engender a new digital economy in the metaverse, and Spokeo is exploring ways to help realize the dream of decentralized identity in the next 10 years.

"Cyberthieves can take out loans, buy expensive properties, and use medical insurance — damaging your credit and reputation. Spokeo Protect can stop identity theft and fraud before it starts.”