- What are keyboard shortcuts?
- Updated Friends mode vs. All Friends mode?
- What is “Mark all friends as read”?
- Why are Spokeo’s updates not instantaneous?
- Why are some update times incorrect?
- What are merged accounts?
- What is social network import?
- Why can’t I import certain social networks?
- How do I import contacts without giving any passwords?
- How do I import a CSV file?
1. What are keyboard shortcuts?
Keyboard shortcuts let you interface with Spokeo through simple keystrokes, allowing you to browse through friends’ updates more efficiently without reaching for the mouse. By default, the following keyboard shortcuts are supported:
| Keyboard Key |
Functionality |
 Right |
Jump to next post |
 Left |
Jump to previous post |
 n |
Select next friend |
 p |
Select previous friend |
 c |
Cycle through new and unread posts |
 b |
Toggle between all and updated mode |
You can change these default keyboard shortcuts under your Account Settings.
2. Updated Friends mode vs. All Friends mode?
Updated Friends mode shows only friends and feeds with new updates in your Friends list, hiding those without any recent news. All Friends mode shows all friends and feeds that you are currently tracking in Spokeo, regardless of whether they have any news. Updated Friends mode is an advanced functionality that lets you quickly glance through all the new events in your Friends list.
3. What is “Mark all friends as read”?
Spokeo automatically keeps track of the number of updates that you haven’t seen, and this unread-post counter is shown next to each friend’s name in your Friends list. When you click on a friend, Spokeo assumes that you’ve finished reading all the new updates, and then resets the unread-post counter to zero. If you have a lot of updates that you don’t care to read, please click on the “Edit Friends” button, and then “Mark all friends as read” option to reset all the unread-post counters.
4. Why are Spokeo’s updates not instantaneous?
Spokeo cannot check your friends’ websites every second because that would overwhelm third-party servers. To maximize content freshness within the update frequency constraints, Spokeo features a sophisticated update scheduler that statistically calculates when your friends will post the next update, then schedules our servers to update their content. The update schedule varies from data type to data type, which will affect the time frame.
5. Why are some update times incorrect?
A lot of information online does not have public dates or time stamps associated with it. When we cannot find the time stamps of the original information, we will display the time of our system’s index. If the information hasn’t been indexed by Spokeo before, Spokeo’s time stamps will be wrong since our initial index does not coincide with the publishing date. That said, once the information has been entered into our index, our system will periodically check it for new updates, and the subsequent time stamps will be more in-sync. If the information includes public time stamps (most blogs have them), Spokeo time stamps will be 100% correct.
Many people have multiple accounts on different social networks. Spokeo can automatically identify all the accounts belonging to the same person, and then merge them into one super-feed. These merged accounts are represented with the "+" icon. Click on the "+" icon to expand and see all the accounts your friend has. Drag a friend on top of another to create a merge friend. Drag a friend out of a merged friend to undo.
7. What is social network import?
In addition to people search, Spokeo can also aggregate and keep track of all your social contacts across various social networks for you. Simply press the “Import Friends” button at the top of your account, then you can see all the various options to import your social contacts into one convenient place. After the social network import, Spokeo will apply its search heuristics to automatically enhance the imported contacts’ data, giving you new insights into your Web acquaintances.
8. Why can’t I import certain social networks?
Different social networks use different sets of technologies, so our ways of supporting them have to change as well. This is why certain networks support both search and import functionality while others support only search functionality. We are constantly expanding our support and connectivity to various social networks. Please contact us if you have any specific request.
9. How do I import contacts without giving any passwords?
Spokeo does not require you to supply third-party passwords to use the service. Spokeo supports Google, Yahoo! and Windows Live (Hotmail) Authentication APIs. These Authentication APIs allow security-conscious users to create Spokeo accounts or import their address books without handing over their webmail credentials. Unfortunately, AOL doesn’t provide a webmail authentication API. We fully intend to support one, should they every implement it.
10. How do I import a CSV file?
You can still enjoy Spokeo if you use Microsoft Outlook or a non-Webmail service. Simply export your address book into a CSV file (What is CSV?). Press Spokeo’s “Import Friends” button at the top, and then click on the “Import CSV” option.